After outmaneuvering Edmonton, Anaheim’s playoff run stalled as coaching gambles failed to neutralize Vegas.
The 2025-26 season came to an end for the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday, in Game 6 of the second round, at the hands of the Vegas Golden Knights.
The Ducks defeated the defending, back-to-back Western Conference champion Edmonton Oilers in the first round. It was a series in which the Ducks and their coaching staff baited the Oilers into playing the Ducks’ preferred brand of hockey, and a series where the Ducks’ coaches played the right cards and made the right adjustments at the proper times.
In the first round, Anaheim had a clear and direct game plan against two of the world’s top centermen, Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Specifically, against McDavid, the coaching staff hard-matched defense pair, Jackson LaCombe and Jacob Trouba, and as a five-man unit, pressured him the entire 200-foot ice surface, focusing on the backcheck and eliminating his ability to attack laterally.
After dropping Game 1 of the series, a game the Ducks felt was winnable, head coach Joel Quenneville made a sneaky last-minute lineup adjustment, swapping Chris Kreider and Cutter Gauthier on their respective lines just before puck drop. He went on to swap the two again at the last minute, after a Game 5 loss, going on to secure a Game 6 victory.
Every time now-former Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch made an adjustment of his own, Quenneville was there to match and eclipse. As the series progressed, Anaheim became more stingy defensively, doing well to keep Edmonton to the perimeter in the defensive zone and simplifying their breakout approach, electing to high-flip a higher percentage of pucks to the neutral zone, where forwards could win puck battles against retreating Edmonton defensemen.
The Ducks series against the Golden Knights played out nearly identically early on, but it was John Tortorella and the Vegas coaching staff that got the better of the Ducks as the series wore on.
After dropping Game 1, a tight affair where the Ducks could have easily been seen as the better team, both by eye test and underlying numbers, Quenneville made another cheeky surprise lineup change just before Game 2 puck drop, but this time, the adjustment was far more dramatic.
Quenneville scratched young $7 million AAV forward Mason McTavish and rookie defenseman Ian Moore, who had been slotted as a fourth-line forward for Game 2, in favor of energy fourth liners Ross Johnston and Jansen Harkins.
The Ducks won Game 2 handily, but dropped Game 3 decidedly. Quenneville reinserted Moore and McTavish for Game 4, along with Olen Zellweger, who made his NHL Playoff debut. Quenneville stuck with his Game 4 playing roster (minus Ryan Poehling, who exited Game 5 early with an upper-body injury) for Games 5 and 6, both of which the Ducks lost, ending their season.
The Knights saw the return of their long-time, middle-six, two-way center, William Karlsson, for this series against Anaheim. Tortorella tried him on the third line, but quickly found he was better suited for the second, and kept him there for the duration of the series.
Other than Karlsson’s return and fit, the only adjustments Vegas had to make were tinkering with their third defensive pair and navigating top-pair defenseman Brayden McNabb’s Game 5 ejection and Game 6 suspension.
Though Quennville’s lineup adjustments found some success in the second round against Vegas, they didn’t have quite the impact that they did in their opening series against Edmonton.
Tactically, Quenneville and the Ducks’ staff didn’t have an answer for the waves of the Knights’ offensive pressure and sound, stingy zone defensive structure.
Vegas was able to do to Anaheim what Anaheim did to Edmonton: force them to play their brand of hockey. Vegas is a cycle-heavy team on the offensive side of the puck, valuing possession time and using that time to break down opposing defensive structures and open dangerous lanes.
Defensively, Vegas plays contained. They keep opponents to the perimeter, block shots, and force mistakes, to which they aim to capitalize. The Ducks made those mistakes, and the Knights capitalized in abundance.
Anaheim failed to adjust, and their only answer offensively was to funnel more pucks and bodies toward Carter Hart and the Vegas crease. Those pucks were predictably blocked and cleared along with any semblance of traffic in front of Hart.
Hart showed vulnerability during Vegas’ first-round series against the Utah Mammoth when he was forced to defend rushes and when he was forced to move laterally. Anaheim wasn’t able to force him into doing either and made his job infinitely easier.
Vegas’ puck management negated Anaheim’s rush attack. Ducks’ defensemen were far less active and involved offensively than they had been during the season or their first-round series. Even if their ability to join rushes had been negated, activating defensemen down the halfwalls and having them jump to soft ice could have, in theory, been a factor in chipping away at Vegas’ seemingly impenetrable slot.
The Ducks have, for all intents and purposes, kicked their contention window open and will be aiming to at least return to the second round of the playoffs and contend for Stanley Cups for the foreseeable future.
These playoffs provided some unexpected success, and perhaps more valuable, offered a chance to learn what it takes to battle on a nightly basis and defeat the same opponent four times in seven games.
They also learned that each opponent offers vastly different styles from the previous, and they have to walk the tightrope of being willing to make tweaks to their approach without sacrificing their identity and what brought them to where they are.
The Ducks will have a long offseason of reflection. They will expect their young core pieces to take further leaps in their development and hit the ground running in October in a volatile Pacific Division.