2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Golden Knights vs. Ducks series preview

May 2, 2026, 14:28 EDT

2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs: Golden Knights vs. Ducks series preview

Credit: Corinne Votaw-Imagn Images

Vegas Golden Knights: 1st in Pacific Division, 95 points

Anaheim Ducks: 3rd in Pacific Division, 92 points

Schedule (ET)

Game #	Date	Game	Time (ET)
1	TBD	Anaheim at Vegas	TBD
2	TBD	Anaheim at Vegas	TBD
3	TBD	Vegas at Anaheim	TBD
4	TBD	Vegas at Anaheim	TBD
5	TBD	Anaheim at Vegas*	TBD
6	TBD	Vegas at Anaheim*	TBD
7	TBD	Anaheim at Vegas*	TBD

*If Necessary

The Skinny

Before this year, the Anaheim Ducks hadn’t made the playoffs since 2017-18 — the Vegas Golden Knights’ very first season in the NHL. Now, these two Pacific Division rivals will meet in the playoffs for the very first time after vanquishing their opponents in a pair of six-game quarterfinal series.

Vegas punched its ticket to Round 2 on Friday with a commanding 5-1 win over the Utah Mammoth, who looked intermittently threatening but ultimately didn’t have the horses or the experience to take down the 2023 Stanley Cup champions. The Golden Knights’ forward depth proved to be overwhelming in the series, with a new hero emerging with seemingly every passing game. Mitch Marner sealed the deal with a pair of goals and an assist in the decisive Game 6, marking the first time he’d ever scored with a chance to eliminate his opponent in a playoff series.

Anaheim, meanwhile, pulled off a bit of a stunner against the Edmonton Oilers, who represented the Western Conference in both the 2024 and 2025 Stanley Cup Finals. The Ducks made the Oilers look downright old and slow in their quarterfinal series, with young upstarts Leo Carlsson, Jackson LaCombe, Beckett Sennecke, and Cutter Gauthier skating their opponents into the ground while beating them on the scoreboard. Could this be the start of the changing of the guard in the Pacific Division? It sure feels like it, and if the Ducks can get past Vegas, it’ll be difficult to downplay their credentials as a legit contender.

There’s no question that the Pacific is the weakest of the NHL’s four divisions this year, but that doesn’t mean this won’t be an exciting matchup. Vegas has been around the block and already has a championship with this core to show for it; Anaheim is on the rise and just sent Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl packing for an early summer vacation. One of these two teams will make the Western Conference Final. Who will it be?

Head to Head

Vegas: 0-1-2
Anaheim: 3-0-0

The Ducks won all three games against the Golden Knights in the regular season, and they all took place prior to the Winter Olympics. The last game, in Anaheim on Feb. 1, saw the Ducks shoot out to a 3-0 lead before holding on to win in regulation by a 4-3 score. In fact, all three games ended with the Ducks winning 4-3, although the first two — both in November — were decided in overtime, with Jacob Trouba and Cutter Gauthier scoring the winning goals.

Top Five Scorers

Vegas

Jack Eichel, 9 pts
Mitch Marner, 7 pts
Ivan Barbashev, 6 pts
Brett Howden, 5 pts
Mark Stone, 5 pts

Anaheim

Jackson LaCombe, 9 pts
Troy Terry, 8 pts
Leo Carlsson, 8 pts
Cutter Gauthier, 7 pts
Alex Killorn, 6 pts

Offense

The Ducks led the entire NHL with 26 goals in Round 1, and while they won’t be going up against Connor Ingram or Tristan Jarry in the semis, they should still strike plenty of fear into the Golden Knights’ defense and goalies. Gauthier, Carlsson, and Troy Terry combined for 23 points in the six-game series, while the veteran supporting group of Mikael Granlund, Alex Killorn, and Chris Kreider each finished around the point-per-game mark. And they still have a pair of youngsters in Mason McTavish and Beckett Sennecke who have yet to truly break out.

Anaheim’s power play operated at an absurd 50 percent clip against the Oilers, converting eight times on 16 opportunities. Gauthier led the way with three goals on the man advantage, but Killorn also proved to be highly useful with the extra attacker, scoring two of his three goals in the series that way. Killorn has been closer to a 30-point guy than a 60-point guy since leaving the Tampa Bay Lightning for Anaheim back in 2023, but one of this Ducks team’s superpowers has been the strength of its secondary veteran group in these playoffs. Even if the Gauthier-led contingent of young stars stumbles against Vegas, Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville will be able to fall back upon a robust crew of battle-tested old-timers. Additionally, the Ducks have a decent collection of strong two-way depth forwards, including Ryan Poehling, Jeffrey Viel, and Tim Washe, the latter of whom went 13-for-15 in the faceoff dot in Game 6 against Edmonton and is often used in important late-game situations.

Vegas finished Round 1 with 23 goals, putting them in a tie with the Minnesota Wild for second-most, and their depth is nearly as impressive as Anaheim’s, although their power play hasn’t been as strong. Jack Eichel leads the way for these Golden Knights with nine points, eight of which are assists; Pavel Dorofeyev and Brett Howden both have four goals. Howden, in particular, emerged as a go-to guy for Vegas late in the Utah series, scoring the tying goal late in Game 4, the shorthanded double-overtime winner in Game 5, and the opening goal in Game 6.

Bolstered largely by his performance in the last game, Marner finished the quarterfinals with seven points, 15 shots, and a team-high plus-5 rating while averaging 21:42 of ice time. Not bad for a player who has been criticized his entire career for falling short in elimination games. Meanwhile, Mark Stone and Ivan Barbashev largely lived up to their billings as responsible two-way wingers at the top of the lineup, but Tomas Hertl fell considerably short of expectations with just two assists in six games, and top Trade Deadline acquisition Rasmus Andersson failed to record a point. After giving up first-round picks to acquire both those players, Vegas will want to see some more production against the Ducks in Round 2.

Defense

One of the biggest stories from Round 1 was Jackson LaCombe’s dominance against Connor McDavid. The 25-year-old lefty matched up brilliantly against No. 97 in blue, holding him to just one goal in six games while collecting nine points of his own and posting fantastic shot suppression and generation metrics. Between Washe’s mastery in the faceoff circle and LaCombe’s proficiency at defending the rush, the Ducks were able to combat McDavid both while stationary and in motion.

LaCombe led the Ducks in 5-on-5 expected goals percentage against the Oilers, with regular partner Jacob Trouba close behind. Anaheim’s other defenders didn’t fare quite as well, although John Carlson played a key role in the club’s success on the power play, recording five assists. Carlson primarily skated on a pairing with Pavel Mintyukov at evens, with Tyson Hinds and Drew Helleson rounding out the group; Olen Zellweger sat out the entire series as a healthy scratch.

Both the Ducks and Golden Knights paid to acquire veteran right-handed defenders ahead of the Trade Deadline, with Carlson going to Anaheim roughly six weeks after Vegas traded for Andersson from the Calgary Flames. Andersson had a bit of a turbulent run with the Golden Knights to conclude the regular season and was used in more of a shutdown role against Utah, plying his trade on the top penalty-killing unit alongside fellow ex-Flames rearguard Noah Hanifin. While the Hanifin-Andersson pairing has never been much more than average dating back to its genesis in Calgary, it fared reasonably well for Vegas in Round 1, playing the Mammoth to a 5-5 draw at full strength.

However, it’s fair to wonder at this point if the Golden Knights have enough beef on the blueline to go on a deep playoff run. When they won the Stanley Cup in 2023, Vegas relied heavily upon the likes of Zach Whitecloud, Nicolas Hague, and, of course, Alex Pietrangelo. At the same time, Brayden McNabb was still seeing heavy use, with Shea Theodore and Alec Martinez settling in as their two pure puck-movers. These Golden Knights don’t have nearly as much functional size — particularly compared to Anaheim’s pillars — with their new third pairing of Kaedan Korczak and Jeremy Lauzon noticeably struggling against Utah. Everyone in this group will need to step up their game against the Ducks’ top scorers.

Goaltending

Vegas’s goaltending was a bit of an adventure against Utah. Carter Hart started every game of the series and alternated between excellent and terrible performances, capping it all off by stopping 23 of 24 in Game 6. Hart is as unreliable a starter as they come, and even the one goal he allowed on Friday was questionable at best, so it remains to be seen if the high-flying Ducks can exploit that area of weakness. If Hart falters against the Ducks, the Golden Knights could also turn to Adin Hill, who backstopped them to the 2023 Stanley Cup but has since fallen out of favor amidst a run of injuries.

In Lukas Dostal, Anaheim has a much more established starter, although he is also coming off a bit of a shaky opening series. Quenneville pulled Dostal to put in veteran backup Ville Husso after he gave up three goals on nine shots to begin Game 5 in Edmonton; the 25-year-old netminder responded by stopping 25 of 27 to seal the deal in front of his home fans in Game 6. Dostal is widely regarded as one of the most talented young goaltenders in the league, but he’ll need to put together some more quality starts to give his team their best chance at beating Vegas; he posted a save percentage north of .900 just once in six games against the Oilers.

Injuries

At this point in the playoffs, more than a few guys on each side of a series are nursing something. But the only player missing from the Ducks’ lineup at the moment is team captain Radko Gudas, who played a total of 9:40 out of six games against the Oilers and is currently considered day-to-day with a lower-body injury. Gudas is 35 and has gradually been taking on a lesser role this season anyway, but you can bet Quenneville would love to get him back, given how sparingly he used Drew Helleson on the third pairing against Edmonton. We’ll see.

Vegas is mostly healthy. They’ve been playing without William Karlsson (lower body) since early November, but it’s been long enough that they’ve adjusted to account for his absence. However, Karlsson did take part in morning skate with his teammates ahead of Game 6 on Friday and, health permitting, could be an option against the Ducks — although, considering how well the Golden Knights’ forward group performed against Utah, coach John Tortorella may be inclined to take his time and wait for the right moment to re-insert the veteran center.

Intangibles

If Karlsson does return to the Vegas lineup in Round 2, he’ll be going up against the team that drafted and developed him as a young prospect. Karlsson played the first 18 games of his NHL career with the Ducks in the 2014-15 season before being traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets in a deal that also involved such names as Rene Bourque and James Wisniewski; two years later, the Blue Jackets allowed Vegas to claim Karlsson in the 2017 NHL Expansion Draft, and the rest is history.

He’s not the only ex-Duck on this Vegas team. Back in 2017, Anaheim was so perturbed about the possibility of losing Josh Manson to Vegas that they traded a young upstart named Shea Theodore to the Golden Knights to ensure that they selected Clayton Stoner in expansion. Theodore, now 30, has become a key member of Vegas’s defensive group, posting 385 points in 581 games with the club over nine seasons while averaging more than 20 minutes of ice time each year.

Vegas also has Ben Hutton, another former Duck, on its blueline; Anaheim has zero ex-Knights, but they do have John Carlson, who won the Stanley Cup against Vegas as a member of the Washington Capitals in 2018.

X-Factor

It’s Cutter Gauthier. Anaheim has built very well through the draft, but virtually every aspiring contender has to pull off an absolute home run of a trade before it can get to the top, and Ducks GM Pat Verbeek did just that when he swapped Jamie Drysdale for Gauthier back in January of 2024. Fans in Anaheim should thank their lucky stars each day that Gauthier decided not to sign with the Philadelphia Flyers, because he’s been exactly what the doctor ordered for them. Between the regular season and playoffs, the 22-year-old winger has 45 goals in 82 games this season.

Gauthier, who grew up a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, could prove to be as crucial an addition to this Ducks team as Phil Kessel was to those Penguins before their back-to-back championships. With all due respect to Pavel Dorofeyev, who heated up rapidly late in the series against Utah, the Golden Knights might not have an answer to Gauthier’s sharpshooting ability.

Series Prediction

After picking Edmonton over Anaheim in Round 1, it’s time to go in a different direction here. These Ducks turned a lot of heads with their performance against the Oilers, and they haven’t lost a single game against Vegas this season. Similar to when we saw the Golden Knights stun the hockey world with a surprise run to the Stanley Cup Final back in 2018, these Ducks seem to have a certain aura surrounding them, and the speed and skill of their young core group should give Vegas fits. The Golden Knights have the horses to win a couple of games in this series, but we’ll say the Ducks seal the deal in front of their home fans once again.

Ducks in six games.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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