Cooked Ducks

Of all the results to happen thus far, the Anaheim Ducks were not supposed to be playing golf this early. They had all the momentum heading into the playoffs, concluding with a 3-0 shutout win against Arizona to close out the regular season. Then, the playoff series against San Jose began, and well, there's no other way to describe the Ducks' playoff run this year than legendarily bad. How did it get to this?

• When your goals per game equals one or less, you're not going to win any series. Anaheim averaged that, scoring 0-2-1-1 in each of the games. That's an indictment on the team's alarming lack of scoring depth, and given that Corey Perry did nothing...again, this figures to be a problem moving forward.
• Does one player really make a difference? Without Cam Fowler, the blue line seemed to be in disarray, and it especially showed in game three, where the Ducks just waved the white flag in giving up 8 goals.
• The Ducks are notorious for playing a goon style of hockey, and it caught up with them, when the Sharks could make them pay for their mistakes. The Ducks were undisciplined, and without when no one can step up to provide scoring, that equals disaster.
• For all the flak John Gibson gets for not showing up in the playoffs, he was surprisingly not bad, excluding the game 3 debacle, where nothing went right.

Another year of failure for the Ducks, headlined by the fact that their scoring depth is thin, plus their style of play can be thwarted by a more disciplined team, means that they are headed to the table, roasted and prepared with a nice orange sauce.