Kings rally to beat Ducks, but the gap in the rivalry series is narrowing

The distance between second place and the bottom of the NHL’s Pacific Division is 43 miles. That’s how far Crypto.com Arena, where the second-place Kings play, is from the Honda Center, home of the Ducks, who share the division cellar with San José.

In the standings, the teams are eight points apart after the Kings’ 2-1 win in Friday’s matinee in Anaheim. But despite that result, the gap between the teams on the ice may be closing and that’s important in a two-franchise market said Greg Cronin, who is in his second season behind the Ducks bench.

Cronin was an assistant coach with both the New York Islanders and Toronto Maple Leafs, teams that made up one half of two storied hockey feuds. And those games were ones both fans and players looked forward to.

“The [New York] Ranger rivalry is pretty intense,” Cronin said of his time in Long Island. “And then Toronto and Montreal, totally different markets, but that’s one of the richest, strongest rivalries in hockey, right?

“Having played the Kings last year as a new coach on the West Coast, it kind of hit me like yeah, this a rivalry game. Those are fun.”

Southern California’s rivalry has lost some of that joy and intensity as the two neighbors have drifted apart in the standings, with the Kings finishing third in the division and making the postseason in each of the last three seasons while the Ducks, who haven’t had a winning record since 2018, are mired in a franchise-long six-season playoff drought.

But more than a quarter of the way into this season, the Ducks have begun showing signs of life. Before Friday’s loss, the Ducks had picked up points in five of their last six games, winning four of them.

“The last 10 games we seemed to find an identify as a group,” said Cronin, whose team lost its first game to the Kings 4-1 in the same building five weeks ago. “The last 10 games are more the way we want to play. Whether we’re forechecking or regrouping or just playing as a connected group, we’re starting to figure that out.”

Read more: John Gibson makes 42 saves as Ducks end losing streak against Seattle

The Ducks also welcomed goaltender John Gibson back in the middle of that streak and he won four of his first five starts, the lone loss coming in overtime. Gibson missed the start of the season after undergoing emergency appendectomy surgery in September.

But Gibson, 31, is the fifth-oldest player on a team in the third season of a rebuilding project that may now be paying off. No team in the NHL is carrying more players 21 or younger than the Ducks, who have six in Mason McTavish, Olen Zellweger, Tyson Hinds and Pavel Mintyukov, who are all 21; 20-year-old Cutter Gauthier; and teenager Leo Carlsson, 19. Four of the six were first-round draft picks.

Whether Cronin’s team, the youngest in the division, can take the next step in closing the gap with the Kings and the rest of the league will depend on how quickly those young Ducklings mature. They’re already showing signs of that with Carlsson, who missed his second game Friday with an upper-body injury, sharing the team lead in goals with six. McTavish and Gauthier are tied for second in assists with seven apiece while Mintyukov leads all healthy skaters in ice time per game.

“Most of the teams that are real reliable in how they play, they’re driven by a lot of guys that are in their late 20s, the 25 to 30-year-old group. We have a complete absence of that group,” said Cronin, who has just four healthy skaters between 25 and 30. “It’s just a very unusual dynamic.”

Read more: Goalie David Rittich gets 100th win in Kings’ victory over Winnipeg

The Kings, meanwhile, are searching for consistency. Although Friday’s win was their second in three days and gave them consecutive victories for the first time in nearly a month, it followed a stretch in which they lost five of eight, giving up seven goals to the worst team in the division one night, then beating the best team in the NHL two nights later.

Highly-touted goalie Erik Portillo made his NHL debut for the Kings on Friday and stopped the first 11 shots he saw but the12th got past him, with Ryan Strome giving the Ducks a 1-0 lead 2:48 into the second period.

But Portillo, whose parents arrived from Sweden on Thanksgiving Day, wouldn’t be beaten again, making 28 stops — the most important a pad save on Troy Terry before a wide-open net with 17 seconds left— despite leaving the ice for two minutes to repair a skate blade midway through the final period. That allowed the Kings to come back on goals from their two Alexes, Turcotte and Laferriere.

Turcotte’s came first, on a wrister from just inside the left face-off circle to even the game midway through the second period. Laferriere, who had the assist on that goal, got one of his own 78 seconds into the final period, knocking in the rebound of a Phillip Danault shot to allow the Kings to escape with the win.

“These teams have fought hard over the years and they’re always close games,” Kings coach Jim Hiller said of the rivalry with the Ducks. “They’re emotional games, they’re tight.

“I thought that’s the best game they’ve played this year. They were clearly ready for us. So it probably brings out the best in both teams.”

Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.