Intensity and animosity are a given in games involving the NHL’s California contingent. That’s undoubtedly true whenever the Sharks and Ducks play, even as their rivalry has flown somewhat under the radar.
San Jose and Anaheim comprised the first pair of California teams to play against one another in the Stanley Cup playoffs in 2009. Then, the eighth-seeded Ducks beat the Sharks, the NHL’s top seed as the season’s President’s Trophy winners, in six games in the first round. The upset, aided by plenty of tension culminating in a fight between Joe Thornton and Ryan Getzlaf two seconds into the decisive Game 6, set the stage for enduring friction.
There’s been plenty in the regular season ever since, but Thursday will mark the first postseason game between the two in nine years. In most of the intervening 3,272 days, the San Jose-Anaheim rivalry has arguably been overshadowed by each team’s rivalry with the Los Angeles Kings, at least on a national level.
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The Sharks have matched up with the Kings in the postseason four times since 2010, more than any other opponent, while the Ducks pushed their closest geographic rivals to a seventh game in the second round in 2014. San Jose and Anaheim played against Los Angeles in outdoor games, too.
Those rivalries have defined them, in a way their rivalry with one another couldn’t. The Sharks were the The Team That Couldn’t Beat The Kings, until they did in the first round in 2016. The Ducks, after becoming the first California team to win a Stanley Cup in 2007, have fewer titles than the squad up I-5 North.
That can change beginning on Thursday, at least during the four-to-seven games San Jose and Anaheim stand in each other’s playoff path. An additional spotlight is long overdue, given how tight their games have been.
In the last three seasons, 11 of 13 games between the Sharks and Ducks were decided by a goal. Only one was decided by more than two. Three of four this season went to a shootout.
San Jose Sharks
Plus, they’ve combined to average about 19 penalty minutes a game during that time.
In other words? The potential for a memorable series is plentiful, and the likelihood it goes the distance is high.
Their respective rivalries with the Kings will always loom large, and especially so as long as Los Angeles remains a possible second-round opponent. But when the Sharks and Ducks face off on Thursday, the national focus will center on their rivalry with one another.
If possibility can become reality, it just might stay there.