IRVINE –– For the Ducks, 2025-26 was a season that simultaneously exceeded expectations and fell short of its potential.
They not only made the playoffs but advanced one round, only to be hectored off the ice and onto the golf course by the Vegas Golden Knights. That was the same team whose late-season surge coincided with a flummoxed finish for the Ducks to knock the flock off its perch atop the Pacific Division and relegate it to starting the playoffs on the road.
All four teams that qualified from the Pacific would have missed the postseason outright in the Eastern Conference with the same point totals, and all were at least nine points shy of the third-place Minnesota Wild’s output in the Central Division.
Once the playoffs got going, the story was one of the inexperienced Ducks taking on seasoned adversaries. First it was the Edmonton Oilers, who had played 13 of a possible 16 series in the past four springs, and then the Vegas Golden Knights, who won the Stanley Cup in 2023.
Yet in large measure, it was the youth brigade leading the charge for the Ducks while some of their veterans turned in tepid showings.
“The young guys were the reason we made it to the playoffs and the young guys showed up in the playoffs and played really well. They scored big goals and made big plays,” 32-year-old defenseman Jacob Trouba said. “That was the most encouraging thing, was that they got to that point and then they upped their games.”
Before the season, General Manager Pat Verbeek swung a trade for another distressed asset from the New York Rangers, winger Chris Kreider, who immediately became the Ducks’ leader in career playoff goals. But apart from his goal and two assists in the clincher against Edmonton, Kreider had just one academic goal and four points in his other 11 games, spent predominantly on the top line and playing prominently on the power play.
At the trade deadline, Verbeek sought to finally reward his group with a stretch-run addition and ostensibly plucked a gem from a market full of rhinestones with defenseman and 2018 Stanley Cup champ John Carlson. The former Washington Capitals mainstay came through with four assists against Edmonton but was held off the scoresheet in the final five matches of a six-game series against Vegas. He posted a -5 rating in the process, appearing torn and tattered by the time the Ducks were eliminated.
“There were obviously ups and downs, but overall we were happy with their contributions,” said Verbeek of the two vets. “You’re always searching for that consistency and execution, but the reality is that it’s a tough league and it’s hard to do every single night, especially in the playoffs.”
While 22-year-old Cutter Gauthier, who was playing through two broken vertebrae in the postseason, and rookie of the year finalist Beckett Sennecke maintained and gained steam, respectively, across the two series, Leo Carlsson had eight of his 11 playoff points in Round 1 and a decidedly less impactful Round 2.
That didn’t bode well for the Ducks, who were trampled by a top-heavy Vegas roster’s best players. Mitch Marner poured in 11 points and Pavel Dorofeyev finished the series with five goals in three games, while Jack Eichel and Shea Theodore’s two-way dominance was on full display.
“The way Eichel and Marner played when it meant the most was impressive. It’s something I want to be able to do soon, too,” Carlsson, 21, said.
Both Carlsson and Gauthier are restricted free agents. That could tie Ducks fans’ stomachs in knots, given their recent history with other lottery picks like Mason McTavish, Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale, the latter two of which were dealt to Philadelphia in separate trades and all three of whom went through protracted negotiations that bled into October.
Yet with Carlsson and Gauthier, the questions are less if they’ll sign or where they’ll end up ultimately, but when and for how much they will extend their deals.
“Every winning team has core guys that lead the way, and that’s something I want to become and want to embrace with this team,” Gauthier said.
The Ducks locked down two pieces of their nucleus last offseason with McTavish and goalie Lukáš Dostál, but both regressed noticeably this season.
McTavish was a healthy scratch for two playoff games, though his performances leading up to them didn’t seem as damning as the ones prior to his scratches during the season.
After a torrid finish to last year saw him overtake the team goal-scoring lead, McTavish was positioned to excel with a much deeper forward group and more potent overall attack this time around. Instead, he scored 11 fewer points and five fewer goals while going from an even rating to -15.
“Obviously, [next season] I want to have a way better year, for sure. That goes without saying,” said McTavish, who added that he hoped to enter training camp lighter and quicker. “I’m gonna have to dissect what happened this year, plan it out and set my goals.”
Dostál went from saving more than 14 goals above expected last season, his first year as the No. 1 option, to 2.9 goals below expected during the regular season and a perturbing 5.6 goals below expected in the postseason, per MoneyPuck.
Thanks to winning the starting job for Czechia at the Olympics and advancing one more round than Karel Vejmelka, his countryman and the main man for the Utah Mammoth, Dostál played more total minutes than any other goalie in 2025-26. It was also the second of two consecutive condensed campaigns, thanks to the 2026 games in Milan and the 4 Nations Face-Off in 2025.
“I didn’t feel overworked, I just feel like at some points I could have been a little bit sharper,” Dostál said. “I always like to do a lot of things, but maybe, sometimes, it’s better to slow down a little bit.”
Dostál was also at the center of a troubling trend for the Ducks, as they fell behind to start over 60% of their games across the regular season and playoffs. They also allowed a goal on their opponent’s first shot on net 14 times, including four instances across a dozen postseason contests.
“We just have to have better starts, it’s as simple as that, including me,” Dostál said. “We’ve just got to be more ready, more aware.”
On balance, however, there was much more to like than to loathe about the Ducks’ effort. In 2022, Verbeek arrived to an organization in shambles with little in the way of leadership or standards. It had last made the playoffs in 2018, a year after its window of Stanley Cup contention was shuttered.
In two years under Greg Cronin, whom captain Radko Gudas credited with much of the Ducks’ necessary development and instillment of accountability, the team went from 58 points in Dallas Eakins’ final season to 80 in 2024-25. Under Joel Quenneville, the NHL’s No. 2 earner of career wins and playoff victories alike, they took yet another step, confronting two formidable foes under bright lights.
“They have a better understanding now of how much more work they’ve got to do and how much better they have to get,” Verbeek said. “And that, to me, is priceless.”