With the 2022-23 regular season officially in the books, half of the teams in the NHL will go into the postseason with the hopes of raising the sport’s most coveted trophy. For the fifth straight year, these Stanley Cup Playoffs will exclude the Anaheim Ducks, whose last-place finish makes them the odds-on favorite to land the top draft pick during this summer’s draft.
Related: Ducks 2022-23 Superlatives: Forward Edition
While a high draft pick promises to turn Anaheim’s fortunes around, this year’s postseason has plenty of teams worth rooting for. Picking a team to root for is subjective, but there are more than a few that I believe would be easy to cheer for as Ducks fans. Whether they have former players, a similar market, or they’re just simply fun to watch, here are five teams for Ducks fans to cheer on in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Boston Bruins
If we’re hopping onto a bandwagon, why not pick the front-runner? This year’s Presidents’ Trophy winner has been on a roll from the onset of the season, ignoring any predictions of a slow start with a new coach and several injuries going into the year. It was immediately clear these injuries wouldn’t bother Jim Montgomery’s Bruins, as Brad Marchand returned from offseason hip surgery well ahead of schedule, and the team won 11 of its first 13 games without star defenseman Charlie McAvoy. One contributor to their success is old friend Hampus Lindholm, who notched career highs in assists (43) and points (53).
It’s hard to overstate how good the Bruins have been this year. They’re one of four teams to hit the 60-win mark, a feat most recently achieved by the juggernaut 2018-19 Tampa Bay Lightning. They had a 22-game point streak at home that ran from the beginning of the season and pushed into January. And with a 5-4 win over the Montreal Canadiens in their season finale, they secured their NHL-record 65th win. This year’s Bruins team will go down as one of the best of all time, and a Stanley Cup would only further validate their place in history.
Carolina Hurricanes
Does a smaller, less-traditional hockey market sound familiar? Ducks fans have no issue throwing their support behind a team that gets less national attention than the average prestige franchise. The chip on their shoulder only gets bigger after a few straight years of disappointing playoff exits. Is this beginning to sound like the Bruce Boudreau-era Ducks? We can’t change the past, but we can hope our friends in Raleigh have a better ending.
The Hurricanes have been one of the more fun teams to watch in the last several years. They are one of the few teams fast enough to make the dump-and-chase a viable offensive strategy. Andrei Svechnikov was pulling off Michigan-style goals before Trevor Zegras broke into the league. And now that Brent Burns is out of San Jose, seeing him lift the Cup for the first time would be a feel-good moment in the twilight of his career.
New Jersey Devils
From early season chants to fire their head coach to clinching their first playoff berth since 2018. The New Jersey Devils were a popular choice to take a big step forward, and this has largely been realized. Jack Hughes has become a superstar, and a supporting cast of Nico Hischier, Jesper Bratt, and Timo Meier makes for a high-octane offense. Goaltending, which has been an issue in New Jersey for years, has stabilized under Vitek Vanecek.
Ducks fans clinging to hope after the rebuild can look to the Devils for inspiration. Not every rebuild gets multiple number-one overall picks, but their development goes beyond Hughes and Hischier. This was a team that finished with the fifth-fewest points in the league a year ago, so while the seeds of the rebuild have been planted for a few years, the results have started to pour in all at once. I’m not ready to call Anaheim the breakout team of 2023-24, but I do believe these two teams are on a similar rebuild trajectory in which New Jersey is a year or two ahead.
Tampa Bay Lightning
Rooting for the Tampa Bay Lightning is the unique combination of pulling for the small-market team while also encouraging a dynasty. They have unequivocally been the NHL’s best team for the last half-decade, winning consecutive Stanley Cups and appearing in a third-straight Final last season. This feat is significant enough to be the only such instance in the salary cap era, and a fourth appearance would be the most since the dynastic 1970s.
Ducks fans need to look no further than Corey Perry for a reason to root for the Lightning. His contract buyout in 2019 remains one of the lowlights of this era of Ducks hockey. He isn’t the goal-scorer he once was, but he’s been a significant role player on three-straight Stanley Cup teams. The problem has been that his team has come up short each time, including last year’s Lightning. At 37 years old, Perry’s time in the NHL is nearing its end. With his only Cup coming while he was a 22-year-old in Anaheim, he has the chance to bookend his career with Lord Stanley.
Los Angeles Kings
Four Eastern Conference teams are easy to root for, but can you put your animosity aside for a few weeks? While their records are vastly different this year, the Ducks and the Los Angeles Kings have been mirroring each other for the better part of a decade. From a series of deep playoff runs in the mid-2010s to falling apart by the end of the decade, the two teams haven’t been more than a year or two apart in development. The Kings are in the playoffs for the second straight year because they were quicker to recognize their need to rebuild, so they flipped most of their championship-winning core for picks and prospects. By the time they returned to the playoffs last year, they had amassed enough extra draft capital to acquire Kevin Fiala in the offseason. And this resurgence has happened with minimal NHL production from their high-profile first-round picks Alex Turcotte, Quinton Byfield, and Brandt Clarke.
So why root for the Kings? Like with New Jersey, I think a deep run from Los Angeles would help as a proof-of-concept for Anaheim’s current rebuild. I’m also of the mind that one of the teams from California being a contender is good for the sport and helps grow the game at the local level. It’s always exciting to see locals like Cam York (Anaheim Hills) and Jason Robertson (Arcadia) grow up as fans and break into the NHL, and nothing creates fans in the Los Angeles area more than winning. That’s worth rooting for a rival.
With the Ducks out of the playoffs for a fifth straight year, picking a new team to root for in the postseason has become common practice. I’ve tended to pick teams that play at a faster pace, like the Hurricanes or Colorado Avalanche, though I hold a soft spot for former Ducks players as well. Regardless of rooting interest, the playoffs are the most intense time of year and this season should be no different.
