The scene from inside the Honda Center on Thursday said it all. There was the fist pump from goaltender Lukas Dostal. The sea of orange-clad fans, scattered across the seats, descending into a frenzy as the horn sounded and Game 6 — a 5-2 win to secure a first-round series win — ended. The dozen-plus Ducks flipping over the boards and gliding across the ice, starting a celebration absent from the franchise for nearly a decade.
“Unreal,” Dostal, who backstopped all four wins over the Oilers, told reporters from his locker room stall postgame, and that really was a fitting word to describe the statement they’d just made. Edmonton had advanced to the past two Stanley Cup Finals. The Oilers possess one of the game’s most dynamic players in Connor McDavid. But they ran into the buzz saw of the Western Conference, the Ducks suddenly relevant again well ahead of schedule. The last time Anaheim won a playoff series, Ryan Getzlaf was captain and topped 70 points for the final time in his career — back in the 2017 tournament, near the end of a stretch that included nine postseason berths in 12 years and one Stanley Cup.
So much has changed since then. A rebuild sucked the life out of Anaheim for so long. In many ways, a season like this would’ve certainly seemed unreal back in July. But behind a blend of veterans and youth on the roster, and with a controversial head coach behind the bench, the Ducks will start their series against the Golden Knights — whom they defeated in all three regular-season matchups — next week as one of eight teams left standing. They sit 12 wins from the second Stanley Cup in franchise history.
“We’ve got a taste of playoff hockey,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville told reporters after securing a spot in the conference semifinals, according to NHL.com. “Now, we get to experience another round, and I think this is healthy for us. … You don’t know how they’re going to play, but you’re certainly excited about what the upside is.”
The pieces that carried the Ducks in the opening round captured their balanced foundation. Defenseman Jackson LaCombe, 25 and a former second-round pick, led them with nine points, including one goal. Cutter Gauthier led Anaheim in goals against Edmonton with four, just as the No. 5-overall pick in 2022 — acquired from the Flyers in January 2024 after refusing to sign in Philadelphia out of college — did during the regular season (41 goals) too. Leo Carlsson, 21, added three goals against Edmonton. Beckett Sennecke, 20 and the No. 3-overall pick in 2024, chipped in a goal during his first taste of the postseason too.
“A lot of us young guys are learning a lot as we go along, and I thought we got better throughout the series,” LaCombe told reporters after the Edmonton series, according to The Associated Press. “It means a lot for us.”
And then there were the veterans. Troy Terry, the longest-tenured Duck at nine seasons who has seen it all, collected three goals. Chris Kreider, the longtime Rangers star shipped to Anaheim in the offseason when they overhauled their core, added one goal and five points. The Ducks also have Alex Killorn — who won a pair of Stanley Cups with the Lightning — and veteran defenseman Jacob Trouba too.
But even with all those pieces, both brimming with potential and already established, the Ducks were still an unpredictable team. They finished third in the Pacific Division with 92 points — eight wins and 12 points better than 2024-25 — but lost eight of 10 games to close the season. They only had four players with 20 or more goals during the regular season. And at the macro level, they’d hired and fired three different coaches since their last postseason appearance in 2018.
In the offseason, the Ducks hired Quenneville, who was previously banned and then reinstated by the NHL for how he handled the Blackhawks’ sexual assault scandal while coaching in Chicago, as head coach in a controversial decision met with plenty of backlash. They brought in centers Mikael Granlund and Ryan Poehling via free agency and trade, respectively. They added veteran defenseman John Carlson from the Capitals in a shocking deal at the deadline too.
“It’s been a long time,” Terry told reporters recently, according to NHL.com. “We’ve had fans that have been super loyal. They’ve always showed up for us. They deserved this. A lot of us live in the Newport [Beach] area and, all of a sudden, you’re seeing cars with Ducks flags everywhere. You really start to see what this means to Orange County.”
And for at least two more nights, a scene familiar to Game 6 will unfold inside Honda Center. There will be the orange. The sellout crowd. Maybe a fist pump or two too. That’s what happens during a hockey revival, when an assortment of defensemen and forwards and goaltenders slowly capture the attention of a fan base and — with each dose of magic along the way — simply, and defiantly, refuse to let go.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
