Separated by Short Road, Rivals Took a Long Journey to a Signature Series
ANAHEIM, Calif. - A 30-mile stretch of Interstate 5 separates the home arenas of the Anaheim Ducks and the Los Angeles Kings, but it has taken 20 years for the teams to meet in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
The Kings have made the playoffs nine times since the Ducks came into the league in the 1993-94 season, including each of the past five years. The Ducks have reached the playoffs 10 times. But the teams have appeared in the same postseason only three times, all in the past four years. Game 1 Saturday in Anaheim will bring the Freeway Faceoff to a new level.
'Until you play each other in the playoffs, there's not really a rivalry,' Kings Coach Darryl Sutter told reporters Thursday.
To many, the rivalry has already become real. The Ducks won Southern California's first Stanley Cup in 2007, and the Kings followed in 2012. The series between the teams is deadlocked at 53-53-11, but the Ducks won four of five this season, including a 3-0 victory in an outdoor game at Dodger Stadium in January.
The one-upmanship between the two sides continued through the first round of these playoffs. In Game 6 against the Dallas Stars, the Ducks trailed by 4-2 late in the third period before scoring two goals in less than two minutes to force overtime, where they eliminated the Stars. Not to be outdone, the Kings became only the fourth team to surmount a 3-0 series deficit as they knocked out the San Jose Sharks in seven games.
The Kings' first-round turnaround was led by defenseman Drew Doughty, goalie Jonathan Quick and the rookie Tyler Toffoli, who scored two game-winning goals.
'They just kept coming and coming,' Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau said. 'They didn't deviate from the way they play. They had four lines, and Quick was looking so much more like Quick in his last four games than he did in the first three, which is good for them, not for us.'
The series will feature elite No. 1 centers in the Hart Trophy finalist Ryan Getzlaf, Anaheim's captain, and Anze Kopitar, who led Los Angeles in scoring for the seventh straight season. But the Ducks, the top seed in the West, have had no shortage of depth, either.
In their series-clinching victory, the bruising Devante Smith-Pelly and the versatile Nick Bonino each scored two goals. In net, Jonas Hiller relieved the rookie Frederik Andersen and held Dallas scoreless as the Ducks rallied. Hiller will probably regain the starting job.
'It was definitely nice, mentally, to feel like I caught a break and to be able to get in there and help the team,' Hiller said. 'You feel so much more a part of the team than if you're sitting on the bench.'
The Kings, part of the N.H.L.'s six expansion teams in 1967, had Southern California to themselves for 26 years. Anaheim's elder statesman, the 43-year-old Teemu Selanne, said his favorite memories of playing the Kings came before the Ducks even entered the league. As a member of the Winnipeg Jets in the early 1990s, he witnessed the seeds that grew professional hockey in California.
'Probably the first time when I started playing against Gretzky, Jari Kurri and those guys, that was more my fond Kings memories,' said Selanne, who first joined the Ducks in 1996 and has spent 15 seasons with them, though not consecutively.
After Wayne Gretzky arrived in Los Angeles in 1988, the San Jose Sharks joined the league 1991, followed by the Ducks two years later. The California franchises have since established themselves as highly competitive. The Sharks have played the Kings three times in the playoffs and the Ducks once. Now, the Kings and the Ducks finally get a playoff chapter in their rivalry.
'Coming here as a visiting team, they had some tough years,' Kings center Jarret Stoll said. 'Those players that played here would probably tell you that it wasn't a very tough place to come into and play. It is now.'
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