Anaheim Ducks

A Disney expansion team that outlived its owner

The club was invented partly to sell a film. The Walt Disney Company paid a $50 million expansion fee in 1993 to put a team in Orange County, half of it handed to the Los Angeles Kings for the right to share their market, and called it the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim after its own 1992 picture. The arena opened on 17 June 1993, first as Anaheim Arena and then, under a water company's sponsorship, as the Pond of Anaheim.

Disney sold the franchise in 2005 to Henry and Susan Samueli for $75 million. In January 2006 the new owners announced that from 2006-07 the team would be known simply as the Anaheim Ducks, cutting the film reference loose. Honda bought the naming rights to the building in October 2006 and has since renewed them through 2030. The split arrangement still stands: the city of Anaheim owns the arena, while Samueli owns both the hockey team and the company that operates the venue.

A Conn Smythe in defeat, then the Cup

Anaheim has reached the Stanley Cup Final twice. The first run, in 2003, ended in defeat by the New Jersey Devils, but goaltender Jean-Sebastien Giguere was voted the Conn Smythe Trophy as the postseason's most valuable player despite being on the losing side — one of the rare times that has happened.

The second attempt finished differently. On 6 June 2007 the Ducks beat the Ottawa Senators 6-2 to win the Cup, with Scott Niedermayer taking the Conn Smythe. That same team set an NHL record by going 16 consecutive games without a regulation loss. Six Pacific Division titles sit on the record: 2006-07, then five in a row from 2012-13 through 2016-17. The franchise has never won the Presidents' Trophy.

What followed was the longest flat spell in the club's history. After a first-round exit in 2017-18 the Ducks missed the playoffs seven seasons running, cycling through coaches and stockpiling draft picks while the roster turned over almost completely.

Quenneville's first season ends the drought

Joel Quenneville was hired as head coach on 8 May 2025, with Pat Verbeek continuing as general manager. The 2025-26 season produced 43 wins, 33 losses and six overtime defeats for 92 points, 273 goals scored and 288 conceded, third place in the Pacific Division and seventh in the Western Conference. Home form carried it: 24-13-4 at Honda Center against 19-20-2 on the road. The playoff place was secured on 13 April 2026.

Quenneville reached his own milestone on the way, winning his 1,000th game as an NHL head coach on 25 February 2026 against Edmonton — only Scotty Bowman had done it before.

The first round pitched Anaheim against those same Oilers. Anaheim lost the opener 4-3 on 20 April, then won 6-4 and 7-4, the second of those on 24 April producing the most goals the franchise has managed in a playoff game, took game four 4-3 in overtime on 26 April and closed the series 5-2 on 30 April. The second round against Vegas went the other way: Anaheim won games two and four but lost game five 3-2 in overtime and went out 5-1 on 14 May.

Cutter Gauthier led the scoring with 41 goals and 69 points. Leo Carlsson, then 20, posted 29 goals and 38 assists in 70 games at 0.96 points per game. Defenceman Jackson LaCombe finished with 58 points, 48 of them assists, and Troy Terry had 57. Lukas Dostal took 30 wins with a 3.10 goals-against average.

The summer of the $18m match

The offseason reshaped the roster twice over. Captain Radko Gudas was traded to Florida on 26 June 2026. A day later, during the first round of the draft, Mason McTavish went to St. Louis for the 15th and 29th overall picks — originally Detroit's and Colorado's — with no salary retained; McTavish had scored 17 goals and added 24 assists in 75 games. Anaheim used the 15th pick on forward Nikita Klepov.

Then Philadelphia tried to take the centre of the rebuild. The Flyers tendered Carlsson an offer sheet worth $18 million a year over five years, a figure that would have made him the best-paid player in the league, above Leon Draisaitl at $14 million. Anaheim matched it on 9 July 2026, locking Carlsson in from 2026-27 through 2030-31. Verbeek said the club had viewed him as a franchise player from the moment they met him before the 2023 draft. Carlsson wrote afterwards that Anaheim was where he wanted to be for the rest of his life.

Mikael Granlund was named the tenth captain in franchise history ahead of the season opener. He had 41 points in 58 games and ten in 12 playoff games last season, and captained Finland to a bronze medal at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Defenceman Nick Jensen and goaltender Laurent Brossoit were added in free agency.

Seven games into an 84-game year

This is the first season under the NHL's expanded 84-game schedule, which adds two regular-season games and removes two preseason fixtures; Anaheim played only four warm-ups, home and away against San Jose and Los Angeles. The opener on 2 October was a 4-3 road win at Vegas, against the team that had eliminated them. The home opener followed on 4 October, a 3-2 overtime win over Florida and a tenth consecutive home-opener victory.

Through 18 October the Ducks are 4-3-0 with eight points, fifth in the Pacific, 22 goals for and 21 against. The split is odd: unbeaten in three on the road, 1-3 at Honda Center. Granlund became the first player in club history to record points in each of a season's first six games, then was listed day-to-day with an upper-body injury on 15 October, though he travelled with the team on the four-game road trip.

Against Boston on 16 October, with Granlund out, Gauthier played centre for the first time in his NHL career. Anaheim led 2-0 and lost 4-2: Boston converted all three of its power plays while Anaheim's unit, among the league's best early on, went 0-for-5. Quenneville called it one of those games that gets remembered at the end of the year as having let the other side run the table. Beckett Sennecke, who scored, has five goals.

Honda Center in the middle of a billion-dollar rebuild

The arena holds 17,174 for hockey, and the team is playing through a $1 billion privately funded renovation announced in April 2025 and branded Honda Center Encore, with construction running through 2027 and the building staying open throughout. Work in progress includes a five-storey south entrance with elevator towers at full height, new escalators and club suites, more parking, rebuilt lavatories, and a relocated first-aid station outside section 202 run with UCI Health. New for 2026-27 is the Splitero Club on the club level, with private booths, loge seats, a full-service bar and buffet, and sightlines to the concert stage as well as the ice.

The arena is also the anchor of OCVIBE, roughly 100 acres of development alongside the ARTIC transit hub. Phase one is due in spring 2027: two parking garages, Katella Commons as a 50,000 sq ft market hall with 21 kitchens, five restaurants including one from Roy Choi, an amphitheatre for 5,700, and an Urban Park with a 36ft by 126ft screen. A separate 5,000-capacity concert hall designed by Populous is scheduled for early 2027, and the renovation is timed to finish ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.