Written by Taylor Nigrelli at The Comeback
Going into the season, the Anaheim Ducks were among the favorites to take home the Stanley Cup. They were certainly favored to win the Pacific Division for the fourth season in a row and generally expected to make a deep playoff run.
Yet, here we sit nearly one-third of the way through the 2015-16 season, and the Ducks look like anything but a contender. They currently sit fifth in the weak Pacific Division, with a 9-12-5 record (23 points).
So, what happened? Were we too high on them before the season? Have players underperformed? Are they just unlucky?
The answers lies somewhere in between all those factors, but leans heavily toward the last one.
First it’s important to look back at the beginning of the season and see if our expectations were too high for this team. On one hand, the Ducks have never been a particularly-strong possession team in their recent run of success. On the other hand, we have three years of evidence they can overcome those mediocre possession numbers by virtue of their top end skill players. No one should be questioning whether a team that pushed Chicago to seven games in the Western Conference Finals last season is for real or not.
However, there were some strange quirks to last year’s team. The 2014-15 Ducks went 33-1-7 in one-goal games. Now, with the amount of NHL games decided by one goal, good teams will almost unavoidably have good records in these games. But 33-1-7 is neither repeatable nor sustainable.
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