Anaheim Ducks at the Break: Making Heads or Tails of it

At the All-Star Break, the Anaheim Ducks are just outside of the playoff picture. Depending on how you look at it, this team is either too far away or they have the rest of the Western Conference in their crosshairs.

Its all-star weekend in the NHL, the unofficial half-way point. More like the 5/8 point, but I digress. Currently, the Anaheim Ducks have 57 points; good for fifth place in the Pacific Division and 11th place in the Western Conference. Not an impressive showing for a team that has won the past five division titles.

What is the state of the team this season? The answer depends on how you look at it. The pessimist thinks Anaheim has dug themselves a hole that they can’t get out of. On the other hand, optimists believe that Anaheim not only goes the postseason but makes a deep run toward the Stanley Cup. Let’s dig a little deeper at both sides.

Glass Half Empty

The Western Conference is as competitive as it ever has been. Thirteen teams are still alive for a playoff berth. If the season ended right now, the Anaheim Ducks would be watching the playoffs on television. Here are some reasons why the prognosis isn’t good:

* Not only are the Ducks out of a playoff spot, all the teams they are competing with have at least one game in hand over them.

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* Catching up with the leaders isn’t good enough. The NHL’s first tiebreaker is ROW (regulation & overtime wins), a category that the Ducks are last among their fellow contenders and two away from the closest.

* Anaheim is last in the conference and tied for last in the league in shot differential (-3.5). Historically, that hasn’t been a recipe for NHL success.

* How many times can the team come from the back of the pack and rally enough to make the postseason, before it finally catches up with them?

* Goalie John Gibson, arguably the Ducks best player on many nights, had to come out of the last game after getting hurt in the third period. That adds injury to insult.

Glass Half Full

There are plenty of reasons why Ducks have a great chance to end up with a season to be proud of. Their recent performance combined with several other factors are cause to be enthusiastic about the rest of the season. Some key points are:

* Anaheim’s start to the season was an exercise in surviving the worst case scenario. So many key players missed games early on; Ryan Getzlaf-29, Corey Perry-11, Hampus Lindholm-13, Ryan Kesler-37, Sami Vatanen-24, and Cam Fowler-12. All totaled, 121 man games were missed by the top three defensemen and three of the top four forwards. After all those injury problems, they are still on the verge of a playoff berth.

* The Ducks were 10-4-1 in the fifteen games before the break. They collected 21 of a possible 30 points for a .700 win percentage.

* It isn’t all doom and gloom if Gibson is out for an extended period, his backup is pretty darn good.

* Ryan Miller has made 10 starts since returning from an early-season injury. He has six wins with a 2.14 GAA, .929 SV% and two shutouts. Third-string goalie Reto Berra has a 2.27 GAA and .932 SV% in his 132 minutes of game action with the big club.

22 of their remaining 32 games are within the conference, including 17 against teams they are competing with to make the post-season. It is literally a win-and-in scenario. Their fate is in their own hands.

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Your Call

Which one is it, glass half empty, or half full? In my opinion, the cause for optimism far outweighs a gloomy outlook. Again early in the season, Murphy’s Law was in control of the team. What could go wrong, did go wrong; but the Anaheim Ducks still hung onto the fringes of playoff contention. Now that the stars are back and relatively healthy, Randy Carlyle’s crew is showing how good they can be.

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