A once-feared NHL road trip has become one team looks forward to. But with young cores of the San Jose Sharks and Anaheim Ducks, as well as the Los Angeles Kings' always willingness to improve, the California road trip is becoming a trip to fear once again.
Most visitors head to California for enjoyable reasons. Some are there to collect paycheques from Hollywood or Silicon Valley’s biggest names; some are there to visit Disneyland, and others are there to relax on warm beaches along the Pacific Ocean.
Before the turn of the decade, if you played in the NHL, you went into the Sunshine State to get served as a meal to three separate lions.
The San Jose Sharks had their four best players in franchise history playing together at the same time: Patrick Marleau, Joe Thornton, Joe Pavelski, and Brent Burns. It was the greatest era of hockey that San Jose has ever known. Starting in 2003, they made the playoffs every year, bar two, up until 2018-19.
The Anaheim Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007 when Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf were sophomores, and the duo carried them to consistent success throughout the 2010s. They won the division five years in a row, from 2012 to 2017.
The Los Angeles Kings won more Cups than the Ducks and had as many franchise legends as the Sharks. The two championships in 2012 and 2014 more than made up for the regular-season inconsistency, and they did so with Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Drew Doughty, and Johnathan Quick.
These teams took turns ruling over the Pacific Division and made deep playoff runs, cultivating fanbases in an area where natural ice never forms. The players in particular racked up award after award; Thornton won the Hart and Art Ross Trophies, honours that Perry also claimed. Burns and Doughty won a Norris Trophy each, and Quick picked up a Vezina Trophy.
However, all good things always come to an end. Father time waits for no one, and by 2020, most of those franchise legends mentioned above were either on the wrong side of 30 or were retired.
The only player on that list who was in his 20s and still played for his incumbent team during California's collapse was Drew Doughty, who developed injuries over the next few years as the Kings faltered.
The early 2020s were a dark period for Californian hockey. Nothing could have summarized it better when, during the 2020-21 pandemic year, those three teams were at the bottom of the Honda West division, with Sharks and Kings joined at the hip in the mid-20s, and the Ducks ending as the second-worst team in the league.
But that’s just the cycle of teambuilding in the NHL. Good teams eventually become bad teams, and bad teams eventually become good teams.
California’s hockey teams are now imitating the second half of that statement.
The Kings had the quickest turnaround. After three years of rebuilding, they recorded the second-best regular season in franchise history, and the best season after. Doughty is still around, and his experience is invaluable to their young core, which includes Quinton Byfield and Brandt Clarke. With the recent acquisition of Artemi Panarin and longtime winger Adrian Kempe leading the front lines, they have both the playoff experience and the firepower to be a dark-horse Cup contender.
The Ducks, led by the young brilliance of Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson, and Becket Sennecke, finally worked their way back into the playoffs this year, after going seven years without an appearance. Assuming Anaheim can navigate the tumultuous cap situation caused by the Carlsson offer sheet, they should be back and ready to contend again.
As for the Sharks, with Macklin Celebrini on their roster, it’s only a matter of time before the organization makes it back to the dance. The sophomore finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting and in points across the league, and the Sharks have made moves to support him, bringing in multiple veterans like Mason Marchment, Jacob Trouba, and Darnell Nurse. Assuming young players such as Will Smith, Michael Misa and Ivar Stenberg develop, San Jose could be a juggernaut the league has scarcely seen before.
The best hockey is yet to come for these three franchises, and the fans are hungry for playoff glory. Sooner rather than later, opposing NHL teams will once again fly into California and end up empty-handed and on a three-game losing streak.
If I were them, I’d visit Disneyland to soothe the pain.
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