It really wasn’t all that long ago that California’s NHL teams were competitive forces battling to knock each other out of top spots in the standings. Now, it looks more like someone’s throwing a kegger in the basement and all three teams accepted invitations.
It used to be something of a long-standing tradition for the Anaheim Ducks, Los Angeles Kings, and San Jose Sharks — well, at least one of them each season — to be sitting somewhere toward the top of the Western Conference standings come playoff time and for East Coast-based talking heads to quickly write them off — yes, even when LA went on to win two Stanley Cups in three years.
But things have changed drastically over the past couple of campaigns. Both SoCal teams have been spiraling for some time, and with San Jose’s unprecedented topple into the Pacific Division cellar this year, the state of California hockey might as well be an island floating farther and farther away from the NHL mainland.
So what exactly is happening to hockey out West? Why did the pendulum swing so far in the opposite direction for the teams in the Golden State?
On the surface, all three clubs have a few things in common that, really, all NHL teams struggle with at one point or another. Over the last couple of years, these teams have seen their core players age, dealt with long stretches of injuries, and fired their head coaches due to a lack of positive production.
Of course, there’s a lot more nitty-gritty than that.
Anaheim’s fall has been a slow burn. Age and injuries have caught up to top players like Ryan Getzlaf and Ryan Kesler, both of whom are still locked into big contracts. All the while, the message from Randy Carlyle’s second stint as bench boss clearly didn’t push the offense along for more than one season, which often resulted in their netminder — most recently John Gibson — doing a lot of the heavy lifting.
Los Angeles took a much quicker dip. After hoisting Lord Stanley’s Mug in 2014, the Kings have been booted from the first round of the playoffs twice and completely missed the postseason all together three times. Drew Doughty, Jonathan Quick and Company will likely miss a fourth time now given that they have the second-worst record in the league.
With the rest of the division simultaneously floundering around Anaheim and LA over the last few seasons, it was something of a relief for the NorCal hockey crowd when the Vegas Golden Knights quickly emerged as San Jose’s newest rival and biggest competition.
That is, until the current campaign. Less than a year removed from a Western Conference Final appearance, Team Teal has battled through a lack of depth left by offseason moves and is now without top forwards Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl because of injuries. And, despite being a top-tier team in the month of November, tumbled backward so quickly that they, too, experienced a coaching shakeup with the firing of Peter DeBoer.
Now, the Sharks have joined the Kings and Ducks in that hole. In 2018, all three teams qualified for the playoffs. Now, there is about to be an NHL second season without a California team for the first time since the late 1990s.
Sure, teams around them have gotten better. The Vancouver Canucks went into full rebuild mode after the Sedin brothers departed and have emerged with a feisty young squad. The Arizona Coyotes, despite recently going through a losing skid, have benefitted from having Taylor Hall and Phil Kessel added to their arsenal. Heck, even the Edmonton Oilers have shaken off some of their dysfunction, despite still being pretty top-heavy when it comes to scoring.
That doesn’t mean the Ducks, Kings, and Sharks can’t still be competitive. But here we are.
Whether there’s a turning point on the horizon for the California teams is hard to decipher, even with the trade deadline looming. LA has the most wiggle room under the salary cap ($5,050,529) and has already been active with talks of a Tyler Toffoli trade staying red-hot and Kyle Clifford being traded to the Maple Leafs. Although, with Doughty and Quick’s big contracts extending for a couple more seasons and goalie Jack Campbell departing as part of the Leafs’ trade, it will be hard to beef up the Kings’ dwindling back end.
Anaheim has made it known that they are willing to be active at the deadline, and as Sporting News points out, can free up an extra $10 million by placing Kesler and Patrick Eaves on long-term injured reserve. This would give the Ducks some room to go out and get a young forward to help fill out their offense, although that won’t be an overnight fix.
San Jose is a whole other story. The big rumor out of the All-Star break is that the Sharks could trade defenseman Brenden Dillon, who is set to become an unrestricted free agent after this season. But with so little cap space (a measly $582,835), no first-round pick in the upcoming draft, and the aftermath of Erik Karlsson’s big contract signing still looming large, the Sharks could be in their current hole for a little while.
California hockey fans should probably buckle up. Even with a handful of opportunities to shake things up on the horizon, it doesn’t look like this basement party is getting broken up in the not-too-distant future.
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