This X100. Ducks have talent and a good mix of vets and high potential younger players, as others have mentioned, but the Kings talent is on par (with a projected drop off coming next season for us while theirs projects to take a step forward pending trades, signings etc). The coaching is making up the majority of the difference.
Let's also not forget how badly the Ducks got fleeced on the Zegras trade. Overall their front office is operating a step above than ours currently, but it still is not elite. Since 2019 the Ducks have done a good job hitting on their 1st round picks, but beyond that have very little to write home about. 2014 was their last draft that they really hit with multiple picks (bearing in mind the recent years as still a bit TBD).
That's why it's pointless to bank on drafting your way to greatness. You *need* to poach young talent from other teams for cheap due to various situations (redundancy or needing a change of scenery), you *need* to make shrewd UFA moves.
Superstar top draft picks and UFA signings sure help, but you simply can't rely on that as there's too much variance involved when it comes to drafting and the Kings simply can't attract elite UFAs.
And the Kings actually do quite well in the UFA market, all things considered, when it comes to veteran role players (in recent years that would be Foegele, Armia, Edmundson, Perry, TBD when it comes to Dumoulin and Ceci, but so far not as terrible as we feared, especially Dumoulin). They also traded for a few quality change-of-scenery players (Kuemper, Kuzmenko (for a while)).
What this team lacked in the recent years especially is the young talent poaching. There's a lack of trades for young prospects as well as lack of young player UFA signings. The last trade was Portillo I think? March of 2023. Ontario isn't exactly seeping with talent. There are quite a few prospects that were fairly highly touted that didn't pan out and there wasn't enough influx of new young players in order to keep the competition high and increase chances of someone knocking on the door of the big club. The Reign isn't a bad performing AHL team, but it's full of vets that are career AHLers. Good ones, but AHLers and nothing more.
On the contrary actually, the Kings were on the receiving end of said poaching (Spence, to an extent Durzi, in a way also Bjornfot and there may be more examples). Sure, it would be nice to sign Marner, but it's just not meant to be and I really hope Ken doesn't fall asleep at the wheel hoping to land a big name UFA...well, it could be just our luck that next year's UFA pool is s**t so he will have no other choice but to look for alternative way to bring talent into this organization. And I *really* hope he doesn't trade away Greentree, Bruz or Wooley for some deadline rental...
..in OT