'It's a Big Challenge': Ducks Ready for Freeway Face-Off in Season Finale

Eighty-one down, one to go.
It's hardly a secret the Ducks' season has not gone according to plan. A rebuilding team from the get-go, with a bevy of offseason acquisitions playing their first seasons in Orange County, the club sputtered to a 1-6-1 start and quickly fell out of the playoff picture.
The season then became about building for the future, and despite a clear lack of recent results, Anaheim's young core continues to progress.

"When you're in a season like this, you're looking for development of your young players first," head coach Dallas Eakins said. "They've had good development. Every one of our younger guys has gotten better...Quietly, that is really going to pay off for our future.
"Going through this year, it's always the same thing. Adverse situations during a season like this, they're not fun when you're in it. But down the road, you become extremely grateful for that adversity. You learn great lessons along the way."
To Eakins' point: Trevor Zegras, in his first season without Ryan Getzlaf to take on the opponent's top defensive matchup players, just became the first Duck since the former captain to post 40 assists in a single campaign. He's also joined Paul Kariya as the only Ducks with back-to-back 60-point seasons before their 23rd birthday.

Mason McTavish ranks among the NHL's top-five rookies in nearly every offensive category, and has spent the entire second half of the season in a top-six center role.
"It's night and day," Eakins said of Zegras and McTavish's development over the course of the season. "If you go back and look at the first 10 games and watch their play, and then go watch them now, it's like they are two different players. Their play without the puck has improved dramatically. And their play with the puck has, too. At the start of the year, it was all in every play. Now it's more about decisions versus plays.
"We're really proud of where they're trending and that doesn't discount that there is still work to do. It takes reps. It takes practice reps, watching video, all of these things. If you go back and look at the elite players in the game, it takes time."
Meanwhile, Troy Terry earned his second All-Star nod, tallied his 100th career NHL assist on Fan Appreciation Night and is finishing the season strong, currently with points in five straight games and nine of his last 10.
Jamie Drysdale has missed nearly the entire season but recently began skating with the team and is nearing a full recovery.
The Ducks have also injected more youth into that lineup, recalling Drew Helleson and Bo Groulx from San Diego and adding Nikita Nesterenko and Jackson LaCombe at the end of their collegiate seasons.

Nesterenko and Helleson have already scored their first NHL goals, while LaCombe seemed to instantly impress his new coaching staff, skating over 18 minutes in his NHL debut. And that doesn't even include Lukas Dostal, Max Jones and Simon Benoit, who have all earned more ice time late in the season.
That young group will get one more game together prior to breaking for the summer, for some their first taste of a rivalry that will help define their Ducks' careers: the Freeway Face-Off.
Recently, the battle has favored the neighbors to the north. LA will appear in the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season, needing at least one point Thursday to lock down the #3 spot in the Pacific Division.

"It's always a big game really regardless of the standings or time of season," Cam Fowler said. "It's a rivalry that has been going on for a long time and has a lot of pride on both teams. There are guys that have been here for a while now and it's a game that's important to both teams. For us, it's the last of the year so it's a big challenge."
Make no mistake, the Ducks know winning Thursday won't fix the season's problems or guarantee any sort of success next year, but the pride to win not just for each other, but in a rivalry game to boot, provides plenty of motivation for potentially making things tough on the Kings.
"It's a long offseason but it does have a certain significance to it," Fowler said. "You look at the season series and it's always a team you want to match yourself up against. They've had a great year, done a great job and that's a point we want to get to as a team."
Fowler knows better than anyone what the Freeway Face-Off can look like. The longest-tenured Duck fondly recalled the NHL's first Stadium Series game, a 3-0 Ducks victory over the Kings at Dodger Stadium, and a little less fondly so the first-ever SoCal playoff matchup later that year.
"It was a hard-fought series," Fowler recalled. "They ended up winning but all those games were super competitive and physical...It was a series you had to be ready for physically. Both buildings, in Southern California, were really rocking for the playoffs. It was definitely an exciting time and that's what playoff hockey is all about and that's where working towards here."

"It's hard because they've been playing meaningful games the last couple years, they're fighting for real playoff positioning and that's what we want to be playing for," added Adam Henrique. "But you still want to beat them. There is that factor no matter where everybody is in the standings."
Henrique has lived those big rivalry moments too and understands what it can mean for one's legacy, as he still holds a special place in the heart of Devils' fans for his 2012 overtime goal against the New York Rangers that sent New Jersey to the Stanley Cup Final.
"That one for me is special, with the rivalry, everything on the line," Henrique recalled with a smile. "I think it does kind of define players in their careers. When you look back, even as a player, you can have a quiet regular season or an off year, but when you go into the playoffs, that's when people remember you really."
So while the 2022-23 season will come to a close for the Ducks Thursday regardless, the two points on the line will mean a lot to both locker rooms.
"Obviously, the teams are in two different stages right now, but those games have been highly competitive for as long as I can remember," Eakins said. "We want to have good habits and we want to play our best. Right now, that's the most important thing for our group. It's something we've been talking about for quite a long time.
"We want to compete to our best level and whatever the score is at the end of the night, the score is at the end of the night."