The Detroit Red Wings are back to .500, so they get a temporary pass.
The Boston Bruins? Well, they’ve managed to be a little better than the mediocre mark and they’re missing a few key guys, so it would be reaching to call them the biggest disappointments of the season. Same thing goes for the Vancouver Canucks.
But the Anaheim Ducks? No slack there. The Ducks get first dibs on the bummer distinction after losing at home this week to the last winless club in the NHL. The 6-3 embarrassment administered by the Toronto Maple Leafs was the Ducks fourth loss in a row, all in their own building, and it guaranteed they will finish October at the bottom of the Pacific Division.
That’s not where this team is supposed to be right now. Not after an intimidating 10-2-1 finish made the Ducks the team no one wanted to face in last spring’s playoffs. Anaheim justified those fears too by upsetting the Presidents’ Trophy winning San Jose Sharks in the first round and taking the defending Stanley Cup champion Red Wings to a seventh game in the second. Now you can’t recognize them.
Which is surprising since there was reason for a team that still had several important pieces from the 2007 Stanley Cup winning roster to be excited heading into the season. Even with the losses of Chris Pronger and Francois Beauchemin from the blue line.
Anaheim’s back end had Scott Niedermayer returning after all, younger defensemen James Wiesniewski and Ryan Whitney were emerging, and the goaltending was solid too with playoff star Jonas Hiller and Conn Smythe winner Jean-Sebastien Giguere. Meanwhile the offense looked capable of being diversifying beyond first liners Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Bobby Ryan with the additions of Joffrey Lupul and Saku Koivu up front.
Instead, the Ducks find themselves in an early hole, one that could easily and quickly get deeper. Anaheim can find some comfort by reminiscing about a similar start last season when it was essentially a playoff bubble team until everything clicked late. But turning the same trick might not be possible this time around with a difficult and compressed schedule ahead to accommodate the Olympics.
“It’s a disturbing thing,” said GM Bob Murray told the Los Angeles Times. “We got ourselves in this position but I think this group has to realize we can’t wait as long because those other teams have improved.”
To the point where several of them are moving forward dramatically while the Ducks look like they are heading backward, especially after allowing 11 power plays in their ugly last loss. Those chances turned into five goals for Toronto and at the same time, exposed what may be Anaheim’s biggest problem going forward.
They can’t just beat up teams any more.
And they’re still trying to.
The Ducks won their Stanley Cup by muscling teams, not only in fights but with hits and bumps and shoves all over the ice. Anaheim didn’t mind playing close or beyond the edge either, because the Ducks were great penalty killers, had the goaltending and didn’t need to score a lot to win games.
But the makeup here is different now, even if the Ducks are trying to get time to stand still. The organizational mindset still revolves around a rough edge type of game, yet Anaheim now has the league’s second-worst penalty kill, which would seem to suggest the Ducks might be better served exercising some self control, particularly when it comes to retaliation penalties. The Ducks have taken 55 penalties, the third highest total in the league, and drawn 34, the third lowest.
“It hasn’t been an issue up until tonight,” coach Randy Carlyle said after the Toronto loss. “And the frustration level goes with the lack of success we’ve been having. When you start to see players like (Saku) Koivu or Scott Niedermayer, those players in reaction mode, then you start to question if we’re putting ourselves in a can’t-win situation as our attitude that frustration is getting the better part of us.
“And I’d have to say yes some of those circumstances.”
That’s not a good thing for the Ducks. Aside from being unable to kill penalties very well these days, Anaheim isn’t scoring very much, ranking 24th in goals per game. Perry, Lupul and veteran Teemu Selanne have been producing, but Getzlaf is still rounding into form after off-season hernia surgery while Ryan and Koivu have struggled. And neither Hiller nor Giguere have been particularly distinguished to this point, which doesn’t bode well for a team that might be counting on putting it all together at crunch time.
"I hope not, because it's a long climb," Getzlaf said. "That was a tough battle last year and we don't have that mentality this year, that's for sure."