With the 2025-26 season creeping ever closer, the landscape of the NHL and team outlooks are becoming clearer.
The Anaheim Ducks made a 21-point leap in the standings in 2024-25, improving upon their 2023-24 total of 59 points to 80 points.
With the addition of four veteran players and Joel Quenneville behind the bench, the team’s stated goal from ownership to general manager Pat Verbeek and the roster players is to make the 2026 playoffs.
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Media outlets seem to, at the very least, be buying into the Ducks no longer dwelling at the bottom of the NHL standings and soon putting an end to their elongated rebuild in which they’ve missed the playoffs in each of the last seven years.
Also seemingly buying into it are Las Vegas oddsmakers, who are giving the Ducks decent odds to either remain in the same area of the standings as last season or improve slightly.
According to BetMGM, the Ducks have expectedly low odds to win the Stanley Cup (+12500), Western Conference (+5000), and the Pacific Division (+3500). However, they’ve been given +180 odds to improve by ten points in the standings and eclipse the 90-point plateau, +250 odds to achieve their goal of making the playoffs, and were given an over/under (o/u) number of 84.5 points.
Their o/u number ties them with teams like the Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings, New York Islanders, and Philadelphia Flyers, projecting them around the bubble of the middle third and bottom third of teams in the overall NHL standings.
The Ducks will be relying on a myriad of aspects if they’re to make another sizable jump in the standings and reach the 95-100 point mark, as has been required in the last half-decade in the Western Conference.
Along with the usual, relatively clean injury sheet and bounces going their way needed for teams projected near the playoff bubble, the Ducks will need their young core pieces to take the next steps in their development, Lukas Dostal to translate his success as a tandem goaltender to a starter, their older veterans not let their play decline (too much) on the wrong side of 30 years old, and for Quenneville to prove he hasn’t lost a step in his four years away from the game.
Though much of the Ducks’ relative success in 2024-25 could be attributed to their goaltending, they parted ways with John Gibson, half of that successful tandem, and Trevor Zegras, who was an offensive spark to a team desperate for one, the quartet of acquisitions (Chris Kreider, Mikael Granlund, Ryan Poehling, and Peter Mrazek) have the potential to fit the team’s desired play style and depth chart more conductively, amplifying the young stars and helping better realize their potential.
A five-point improvement is a modest number for a team with designs of playing meaningful hockey until (at least) game 82. Those buying into Verbeek’s plan, the roster, and potentially an elite coaching staff, could be in for easy money with that wager (were they so inclined). Playoffs are a loftier prediction, but still within the realm of possibility for the first time in at least half a decade in Anaheim.
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