Anaheim Ducks right wing Corey Perry, left, celebrates his game winning goal the Patrick Maroon during overtime in Game 5 of an NHL hockey second-round playoff series against the Calgary Flames in Anaheim, Calif., Sunday, May 10, 2015. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)

ANAHEIM, Calif. – On a late September night at Staples Center in Los Angeles, the Anaheim Ducks played an exhibition lineup that could have probably beaten most NHL bottom feeders in a regular season game.

Forward Corey Perry scored two goals in the Ducks’ 2-1 win over the Kings that evening. Defenseman Cam Fowler notched an assist and played 21:28 of action.

Rickard Rakell – the team’s designated third line center who could be a second-liner on a lot of teams – was arguably their best forward with two assists in 18:04 of ice-time. Newly acquired 34-year-old defenseman Kevin Bieksa showed skating ability that made you think he was back in his late 20s.

Young defenseman Josh Manson stood up to Kings crusher Milan Lucic by fighting the big, bruising winger who was trying to make a statement to his new team.

It was the type of preseason win over a rival that should have built some level of confidence for a team heading into a season. Except that’s not how these Ducks looked at it.

For this group, the preseason doesn’t matter. At all. The regular season is just a vessel to get them into the playoffs and atone for Game 7 failures of the last three seasons.

“We’ve gotten a lot of accolades for doing nothing right now, by the way. We haven’t won a game. We haven’t done anything,” coach Bruce Boudreau said. “People aren’t surmising or whatever the word is (over) what we should do. We've got to worry about ourselves on the ice, and everything else will take care of itself.”

A year ago, the Ducks blew a 3-2 Western Conference Final lead to the Chicago Blackhawks and lost Game 7 at home.

Again the Ducks, who were the Western Conference’s top-seeded team in the 2015 postseason, head into the year as a favorite in the Western Conference. But this season, the team’s set-up for success is greater, which means failure could sting even worse.

As some contending teams in the West felt a salary cap crunch, the Ducks loaded up. This combined with learning from past demises should make the Ducks a big favorite to win the Stanley Cup. Except with these Ducks and this core, it’s not that cut-and-dry.

“I don’t think you look at it and you’re like, ‘These guys have to be the favorite right now,’” Fowler said. “We definitely feel like we can contend and we feel like we’ll be there at the end of it but we have to go out and use some of that loss we had last year and use it as motivation coming into this year.”

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All the right moves

Ducks general manager Bob Murray didn’t make a bad roster decision this past summer. He boosted the Ducks’ overall speed by bringing in Carl Hagelin from the New York Rangers and Bieksa from the Vancouver Canucks.

He added goaltending depth by adding Anton Khudobin from the Carolina Hurricanes. The subsequent contract for Bieksa (two years for a 34-year-old starting in 2016-17) seemed like a bit much as did Ryan Kesler’s six-year $41.25-million extension. But those are problems for next year’s Murray. For this season, he needed a happy group that didn’t need to worry about future status.

He also added versatile forward depth by signing Mike Santorelli for one year at $875,000 and Chris Stewart at a bargain price of $1.7 million for this season. Both those deals happened well after the start of unrestricted free agency.

He let Matt Beleskey walk to the Boston Bruins, opting to not give the one-time 20-goal scorer a five-year contract.

According to General Fanager, Murray left himself with around $7.4 million of salary cap space this season.

This gives him enough room to add a player this season if he sees a deficiency. It also keeps him with some level of room when restricted free agent defensemen Simon Despres, Hampus Lindholm and Sami Vatanen are up for new contracts next summer.

While the Blackhawks and Kings were forced to jettison core pieces, the Ducks reloaded.

“Bob did a lot of great things during the summer. It’s up to us to go on the ice and show it was beneficial,” Perry said.

Even in training camp, players in the lineup can sense that this group fits.

“There’s not a lot of holes to fill, especially at forward,” winger Andrew Cogliano said. “I think it’s more of mixing guys up and seeing where guys fit at the moment, but I think our fourth line can be as good as our third line, sometimes as good as our second line sometimes. That’s what you want on the team.”

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