ANAHEIM – Love him. Loathe him. Ryan Kesler is not everyone’s favorite flavor and he knows it. Good with it. Even revels in it.

The feelings spread to the extremes at this point in the season. Teammates want him on their side when it is time for the Stanley Cup playoffs. Opposing players hate the idea of continuously seeing him over entire series. Fans either love or hate what he brings to the ice, depending on their allegiances.

Don’t like him? Bring it on.

“I don’t care,” Kesler said. “I’m off Twitter. I’m off all that stuff.”

Got to win with him, though. That’s how the Ducks view it.

The Ducks enter their second postseason with the often-percolating center. They’re back to complete a run that ended in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals last May. And one reason they’re in this position is because Kesler showed there was plenty of game left in his 31-year-old body.

Kesler was one of many who started slowly. Very slowly. His defense was credible but not at an elite level; his offense nonexistent. And the skepticism that followed his six-year, $41.25-million contract extension last summer only grew louder.

One of those who took a stand after Christmas when the team was languishing in last place, Kesler backed up his talk. His numbers were stellar over the 49-game stretch that saw the Ducks go 34-10-5 – 17 goals, 24 assists and a plus-19 rating.

And there are the usual intangibles that go along with him. It was the dominance in the faceoff circle that made him second best in the NHL. It was how that translated to his work on the penalty kill that easily topped the league. It was his regular ability to keep the top centers from making a big impact.

In these playoffs, it starts with Nashville’s Ryan Johansen and it could move on to the Kings’ Anze Kopitar or San Jose’s Joe Thornton if the Ducks advance. Jakob Silfverberg sees it all up close as his linemate – an equal capacity to annoy at both ends of the rink.

“I don’t think there’s a lot that are as good as him at doing it,” Silverberg said. “Probably every team has one or two guys that do that, but I don’t think there’s anyone up to his standards the way he does it. I think he’s probably the best two-way center in the league.

“He’s really strong defensively and he’s got a hell of a shot. And he’s good offensively. … It’s not often he gets beat, so you really know what you’re getting out of him.”

The furious finish lifted his overall numbers to 21 goals and 53 points. The point total is the most since the defining 2010-11 season with Vancouver where he won the Selke Trophy as the NHL’s top defensive forward.

Talk of a second Selke surfaced in the final weeks. Kesler likes that some have taken notice of his season, which quelled talk that he was a declining player.

“You’re always going to have critics,” Kesler said. “You’re always going to have people that believe in you. That contract – obviously the team believed in me. I think the second half of the year, I proved it.

“Obviously you want to prove all your critics wrong. At the same tine, I’m here to help a team win. This is why they brought me in – to show up at this time of year. This is my job.”

Ducks general manager Bob Murray never put him far from his mind. Murray was a pro scout with Vancouver under then-GM Brian Burke and monitored the team’s AHL club. It is where his admiration for Kesler took root.

“Randy Carlyle was coaching the Manitoba Moose,” Murray said. “And on that team – and we had a really good team and I always got to see them a lot because they were always through the Chicago area where I was living – Kes was on that team. Kevin Bieksa was on that team. We had a good team.

“So I was exposed to Kes a lot in his first year of pro. I’ve always loved the way he played. I remember Randy always telling me, ‘This guy’s a horse, this guy’s a horse.’ And he just kept telling me that.”

With the Canucks on a downward slope from their 2011 run to the Cup Final, Kesler voiced his discontent with the team’s direction. It was in the spring of 2014 where Murray puts his efforts to get him into overdrive.

The first try to get him for that year’s playoffs fizzled when the Canucks opted to keep him at the last minute on a team headed nowhere. It angered Murray, but didn’t keep him from staying on the trail. He had franchise bookends Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry but he needed another game-changer.

Working with a new Vancouver GM in place the following summer, Murray used the large amount of salary cap space – something the top other suitors Chicago and Pittsburgh didn’t have – to his benefit.

“I don’t usually quit,” Murray said. “I knew the other teams involved and they’re really good teams. Really good franchises. I kind of worried that may be a stumbling block for us. And also we were in a better financial place than some of the other teams were. I think that helped. And I just kept bugging. Kept bugging them.

“You just check in every couple weeks and keep your name on it. Eventually it came down to a couple of teams and we got lucky.”

A persistent sort himself, Kesler could appreciate that quality in his eventual boss.

“Murph was there from Day 1, and I knew how bad he wanted me,” Kesler said. “Obviously looking at this team and seeing Getz and Pears and sliding in behind them, seeing their young (defense) corps, their young players and their young goaltending coming up, it was a team that was on the rise.

“I’m happy I’m standing here today, talking to you about playoffs and not talking about how the season went sideways, that’s for sure.”

Nearly a decade ago, the Ducks swung a major trade for Edmonton’s Chris Pronger. Identifying the star defenseman as the player needed to push them over the top was easy. Pronger was the backbone of the Oilers’ five-game triumph over Anaheim in the 2006 Western Conference finals.

Pronger was the yin to Scott Niedermayer’s yang – a towering, brutish defender who relished in intimidating the forwards he was assigned to. And as a 13-year veteran desperate to hoist his first Cup, the Hockey Hall of Famer was happy to wear the black hat for the Ducks.

Kesler has dusted it off. The two are not the same, but the Ducks would love the center to be the kind who makes a difference. Or even the difference. It was the whole reason to chase after him in the first place.

“It’s hard to really compare the two of them,” Getzlaf said. “The fact that Prongs was, at that time, the one piece we were missing. We’d gone to the conference final the year before and we felt if you could get a guy like that, you’re talking about a top-two, top-three defenseman in the league.

“Kes at that point was a big piece of it. I don’t know if he’s the one piece that we were missing in that scenario. But it definitely helps.”

It has taken some time but that black hat fits the center rather comfortably now.

“I wouldn’t say I enjoy it,” Kesler, “but I’ll wear it if I have to. I play a certain style of game that a lot of people don’t like. I have 27, 30 teammates that are my friends. To be honest, I don’t need any more. I can have 700 guys hate me in the league. That doesn’t bother me.

“Obviously I respect the game and I respect the guys I’m playing. But I’m going to play them hard, and if they don’t like it, too bad.”

Contact the writer: estephens@ocregister.com