The Kings and Ducks headed in opposite directions when they skated off the ice Saturday at Crypto.com Arena.

The Kings are going to the playoffs for a third consecutive season, the team’s longest run of postseason appearances in a decade. The Ducks, meanwhile, will be heading to the golf course again after Thursday’s regular-season finale, having missed the postseason for a sixth straight season, the longest drought in franchise history.

Saturday’s 3-1 win was the Kings’ fifth in six games. For the Ducks, it was their 50th loss of the season, a first in the 30-year history of the franchise.

But the gap between the two is narrower and more fickle than it might appear.

“It’s a hard game,” Kings president Luc Robitaille said. “You have to have a plan, you’ve got to stick to it, you’ve got to be a little bit lucky with injuries too.”

When that luck runs out, well, then you have the Ducks.

“You can look at any team that’s won, and they’ve had a little luck,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said. “They’ve had a little, now they’re good. You can never take that away. But there’s always some sort of thing.”

Neither Robitaille nor Verbeek are crediting fortune alone for their teams’ successes and failures. But they’re not dismissing the impact either.

“If you’d say what are you lucky about, it’s more that [ Anze] Kopitar and [ Drew] Doughty are still really important players on our team,” Robitaille said of the team’s captains and five-time All-Stars, both of whom are in their mid-30s. “On other teams that has not happened.

“We feel we’re fortunate these guys are still premier players.”

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