No previous edition of the Freeway Faceoff had ever meant less; the state of Southern California hockey has rarely been lower.
The Anaheim Ducks still moved into a long summer with an emphatic win over their local rivals.
Korbinian Holzer scored his first NHL goal in just more than two years and Sam Steel added a short-handed goal as Anaheim on Friday night finished their disappointing season with a 5-2 victory over the Los Angeles Kings.
Photo: AP
Daniel Sprong, Carter Rowney and Jakob Silfverberg also scored, while John Gibson made 44 saves as the Ducks earned their first victory in four games against the Kings this season.
The rivalry win provided scant satisfaction for Anaheim.
Both teams are missing the Stanley Cup playoffs in the same season for the first time since 2004, and the Ducks missed the post-season for the first time in seven years, despite 11 wins in their final 17 games.
“That’s the hardest thing in sports,” Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf said of their past few weeks. “We’ve gotten used to playing in the playoffs and having those stretch drives late where we’re competing for spots. When you’re out that early, and that far behind, that’s a tough way to play hockey at the end of the year.”
Rookie Max Jones had two assists in his first career multipoint game for the Ducks (35-37-10), who needed that late surge to finish with 80 points, matching the franchise’s lowest total in a full season since 2004.
“We’ve mostly been prepared for this moment for a few weeks, but we’ve been playing pretty well lately,” said Silfverberg, who set a career high with his 24th goal. “We’re kind of past the point of being angry. It’s been a good ride for a while here, but that doesn’t change the feeling.”
Michael Amadio and Carl Grundstrom scored, while Jack Campbell stopped 28 shots for the Kings, who have the NHL’s second-worst record with one game to play — one point fewer than New Jersey.
The rivals largely played a clean game until the final minutes, when a handful of prolonged scraps broke out and led to 42 combined penalty minutes.
“Regardless of wherever everyone is in the standings, you know it’s always going to be an emotional battle,” Kings defenseman Alec Martinez said. “It’s always going to be a revved-up environment. That’s what it was tonight.”
Although the Kings have one game left, this local derby was a simultaneous farewell to a season that ended a seven-year Southern California hockey renaissance.
The Kings have won two Stanley Cup titles and made three Western Conference finals since 2011, while the Ducks won five consecutive Pacific Division titles and reached two conference finals in the same stretch.
After both teams were swept out of the first round in last spring’s playoffs, Los Angeles struggled from the start this season, finally unable to use their grit and defensive acumen to compensate for years of offensive stagnation.
Anaheim were firmly in the playoff race until the week before Christmas, when injuries and a mystifying goal drought led to a 5-21-4 slump.
The Ducks began their resurgence too late to get back in the race, while the Kings have remained the Western Conference’s worst team for many weeks, despite five victories in their previous eight games.
A sellout crowd still turned out at the Honda Center to wrap up the season, and the two lowest-scoring teams in the NHL managed to produce some entertainment.
After Amadio converted a fat rebound for the game’s first goal, Rowney scored on a blind pass from Jones to even it.
The Ducks went up 2-1 when Holzer slammed home a pass from Jones for the veteran German defenseman’s first NHL goal since April 2, 2017, and just his fifth over seven NHL seasons with Toronto and Anaheim.
Sprong scored his 14th goal in 47 games during his solid debut season in Anaheim and Steel scored shorthanded in the third period.
“We had lots of shots tonight,” Kings coach Willie Desjardins said. “I think the difference a little bit there was specialty teams. If we would have capitalized there, it would have been a different game. It happens some nights.”
In other games on Friday, the Columbus Blue Jackets edged the New York Rangers 3-2 in a shoot-out and the Chicago Blackhawks demolished the Dallas Stars 6-1.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier