The Ducks’ victory Wednesday night over the San Jose Sharks means the third-place Kings will face the Sharks in the first round of the playoffs. The Ducks will play a wild-card team from among Minnesota, Dallas and Phoenix. The Ducks-wild-card winner will play the Kings-Sharks winner in the second round.

“Obviously, it’s going to be a pretty hard-fought series,” the Sharks’ Dan Boyle said of playing the Kings for the third time in four seasons “Very good team over there. I believe we won the first one (a first-round series win over the Kings in 2011) and they won the last one (a second-round series last season). We’ll see what happens.”