Things seem to be going well in Anaheim these days. A 7-0-1 run has fans murmuring about second half surges of the past and wondering if a miracle can happen to propel the Ducks into the playoffs. Along with the hope of a postseason birth will come the annual second half celebration of the job Bob Murray is doing. We'll get to that later. First, it's important to understand the hole the Ducks dug for themselves and what the future might actually hold for them.

The Ducks have had this great 7-0-1 streak, and as a result they've moved up one place in the standings. 13th never looked so good. However, there's a silver lining. The Ducks have games in hand on every team in front of them except the Dallas Stars. The bad news is that if they do win all those games in hand they won't pick up a single spot in the standings. That's how far out of the pack they are. The Ducks are 13 points out of 8th place in the Conference, or 7.5 games in baseball terms. Unfortunately, Conference standings work a little differently in the NHL. There are 5 teams between the Ducks and the playoffs and all of them will be playing each other.

It took 97 points to make the Western Conference Playoffs last season. The Ducks have 41 points with 36 games left, so they need 56. That's 28 wins of the last 36. More importantly, it probably has to be 28 wins, because if the Ducks try to pick up points with overtime losses, they'll most likely be giving points to teams that are ahead of them in the standings, which is the real problem. As I said earlier, there are five teams between the Ducks and the playoffs. Ever since the implementation of the shootout one team wins every night. Essentially, when teams 10 and 11 in the standing play each other, one of them puts distance between themselves and the Ducks. Considering that three of those teams are from the same division, Calgary, Colorado and Minnesota, chances are the teams ahead of the Ducks will be playing each other rather frequently. That means the Ducks will be hard-pressed to make up ground.

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This is Anaheim Calling to the Hockey World...

Things have been spiraling out of control for the Ducks since a four game winning streak after losing the first game of the season. In all sincerity, the team has been awful from almost the word go. As such the inevitable has arrived: the Ducks are going to start selling assets. Jen recently linked to this Puck Daddy article that revealed Murray's plans to make everyone, except Teemu Selanne and Saku Koivu, available for trade. Increasing the angst for Anaheim fans, Jeff Miller and Eric Stephens discussed the merits of making a major deal, and then wondered out loud if Murray was even the GM to do it. Miller went so far as to offer this tidbit arguing that the "G" in RPG needs to be the one shown the door.

Most know where I fall on a majority of these discussions, but every now and then, I suppose it's good to check in with a more thorough explanation. Therefore, this is my take on three key issues: Trading one of RPG, whether the team should rebuild, and whether or not Murray is the GM to do it. In the immortal words of Shakespeare, "I will bite my thumb, let them take it as they list."

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It's getting very tough to keep watching this team. After two minutes of the Vancouver game Thursday, you could just tell it wasn't going to get any better. The losses are just as frustrating and the wins mean little to nothing. If you're like me though, you can't just turn the channel like a normal person and move on to something else. With that in mind we have to find some way to be entertained by these so called "hockey games" for the next three and a half months. So I've come up with the top five reasons to keep watching Ducks games. Enjoy

5) Fights

Chances are that if you're reading this, you probably aren't the type that watches hockey for the cheap thrill of the occasional bare knuckle brawl. At this stage of the season however, the primal experience of cheering for a grown man to bash another in the face repeatedly is probably a healthy release of tension to avoid doing it yourself in everyday life.

4) Monday Night

On Monday the Ducks played their best game in about a month. They started out well and kept up a consistent level of play for 60 minutes rather than get down on themselves and write the game off like they have so many times this season. They're bound to do it again, aren't they? We may not be able to expect this of them every night (although we should) but there must be some good games to come in this train wreck of a season ... I think. That wasn't very convincing so let's move on.

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Holy Cow! I have so much to say about this game, and after a month of not having anything to say about the Ducks, except that they suck, it's a huge relief. I started to comment on Jen's recap post, but once it hit 700 words I figured I should probably just make a separate post. So here are some of my reactions to the Boudreau Era after one game.

Re: Matt Beleskey - He played really well with Teemu and Saku. I don't know what it was; He doesn't have a ton of speed; he's not particularly big, or physical (more on that later) but it just seemed to fit. He did pass up a couple of opportunities to shoot, and stifled at least two 2-on-1's with an extra pass. The guy can wire it and like a certain captain, should do so more often.

If it was up to me though, he wouldn't have the opportunity to for at least a game or two because he should be suspended for that boarding in the first period. It was exactly the same as when Ethan Moreau boarded Chris Kunitz in the Kings/Pens game a few weeks ago. He got him square in the back and raised his arm to deliberately drive the guy's head into the glass. UGLY. Moreau only got the max $2,500 fine though, so maybe Beleskey will get off easy too (but he shouldn't).

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Yes yes, the Ducks aren't very good. They're bad. This isn't a news flash to anyone. A change needs to come in order for things to turn around. It's not a question of when it will happen, but of whom it will happen to. We've gone over this before, debated to exhaustion. We've made our speculations, tossed about our fantasy trade ideas and I've even gone as far as to completely dismantle the lines and pairings.

Ultimately we all know it comes down to one question: who is getting the shaft? There are those who want simple changes, like Ryan Getzlaf stripped of his Captaincy, and others who are in favor of moving big names like Bobby Ryan. Then there are the hoards of fans who's interest lie in removing those in charge such as Bob Murray and/or Randy Carlyle. Sign me up for removing Carlyle ASAP. This isn't a new development in my book, I've been ready to give Carlyle his walking papers for years now. I don't know, maybe it had something to do with the continuing history of bad starts followed by early playoff exits.

Recently, Joffrey Lupul spoke out against his former coach with some unsavory words. Many saw it as bitter spewed commentary by the two-time former Duck who is looking fabulous in his new home in Toronto. Quite honestly, I don't give a tiny rats-ass about what Lupul is doing in Toronto. I can't begin to waste energy hating on a trade that is said and done, especially when the team I'm rooting for looks so terribly awful. I don't have time for bitter, I'm too busy being pissed off. But that's what this is all about, right? How bitter and upset Lupul is because he had to move away from sunny Southern California to cold Toronto Canada. So take his harsh commentary on Carlyle as you wish, but I read it as a glorious and simple "point to the argument". Randy Carlyle is a jerk...and I'm paraphrasing that nicely.

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We all know the old cliché, you can't make the playoffs in October and November, but you can surely eliminate yourself. Unfortunately, it looks like that's exactly what the Ducks have done with this atrocious month of November. Usually I make it a point to avoid looking at the standings until at least Christmas. With the fluctuation from day to day and the end of the season being so far away, there is usually little knowledge to gain. The exception to that rule is the bottom of the standings.

To put it into perspective, I looked back to last season for comparables.

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It's tough to find any motivation to write when your team is so embarrassingly and infuriatingly bad. Sure, you can vent and bitch and complain, but that only offers so much relief. We can propose line combinations, advocate for changes in captaincy, or scream for the coach's dismissal, but after that, what's left?

One of the most excruciating things about this season so far is how badly we've under-performed as a team. After all, we have the reigning league MVP, the reigning point-leader among defensemen, and four of our skaters finished in the top 21 amongst point leaders last season. In fact, the Ducks had five players (Corey Perry, Teemu Selanne, Ryan Getzlaf, Bobby Ryan, and Lubomir Visnovsky) finish in the top 30 for points last season. The next best teams (Dallas, Chicago, and Vancouver) only featured three such skaters.

In short: We shouldn't be this bad.

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CHRIS:

It’s been a trying couple of weeks for us Ducks fans. As the road trip comes to an end tomorrow in Detroit, the Ducks have gone 1-4-3 in their last eight. Ouch.

We all know that the Ducks aren’t scoring enough goals. Their 2.0 goals per game average puts them above only the Islanders at this early stage of the season. I’m not going to pretend to have the answer. It’s too daunting a task to rehash why they’re not scoring enough. It seems like there are as many reasons for the offensive drought as there are players on the roster.

The most frustrating part of this dismal stretch for me, as a fan, isn’t just the lack of scoring, but that combined with the slow starts. In each of their four regulation losses over this stretch the Ducks have given up a goal in the first five minutes of the game, twice in the first 15 seconds; the Ducks have not been able to win a game this season when giving up the first goal; and they’ve only taken a lead after trailing once all season.

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