We're at the part of the season where you stop checking the standings every morning and start checking them every few hours. The Ducks are right there - not where they expected to be a couple years ago when the full tank was in effect, but not embarrassing themselves either. Mason McTavish has looked like the real thing more often than not lately, and when he's going the offense has a different energy to it. The problem is the back end keeps undoing the good work up front. Defensive coverage lapses at the worst moments, and it's been a rotating cast of "which guy is having a bad week" that keeps the coaching staff up at night.

The goaltending situation has stabilized a bit, but "stabilized" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. We need Lukas Dostal to be the guy, and there are nights he looks like it and nights where you're staring at the ceiling. The power play has been infuriating - talented personnel who can't find each other consistently, which has been the critique all year.

Home games at Honda Center right now feel like a gut check. When this crowd gets into it the young core responds. If you can grab tickets for a late-season home game, do it - these kids are going to be worth watching and the urgency in March is different from October. There's something unresolved about this team that makes every stretch of games feel like an audition. The potential is real. Whether this year is the year it starts clicking in a sustained way is the question nobody has a clean answer to yet.