The Ducks keep saying it’s early and they have time to turn their season around, but I disagree. They’ve played 25% of their games and are in last place in the western conference. It’s a lot harder to dig yourself out of a hole like that than it is to move downward or up just a little.

Think about taking a class. If you decided to completely fail and perhaps not show up for the first quarter and had a solid F, even if you got perfect scores for the rest of the year, the best you could do is squeak by with a 75%, a C. Not exactly a good record if you'd been top in your class a couple years ago. This is the Ducks right now. They're last in their conference and only third from last in the NHL. Is it possible for them to recover at this point? Yes. Would I recommend that Ducks fans count on it or think of it as a realistic possibility? No way.

Mathematically, it's totally possible for the Ducks to end up anywhere in the conference. However, with many of the games being 3 point games with teams losing in overtime or a shootout and with the Ducks not playing well enough to guess that they will win most of their games for the rest of the season, the odds of the Ducks making the playoffs are pretty slim at this point. They have to turn their game around to start winning and count on all the teams ahead of them to lose more games than they do. That's a pretty tall order and it doesn't seem too likely.

While it's not officially too late, perhaps Ducks fans should be thinking of the money they will probably be able to save in April, rather than spending it on playoff tickets and the players who will go early in the draft. At this point, it looks like the Ducks will have a table closer to the stage at the draft than they have in a long time. Perhaps it's just not possible for both southern California teams to do well at the same time. True, the Kings have been far from consistent, but at least they've been winning more games than not and are generally looking a lot better than the Ducks.

The standings will change a lot between now and the beginning of April, but I haven't found anyone who still believes the Ducks will be one of the teams still playing by the end of April and I personally would be shocked.

Kat