With the end of the year upon us, now is a good time to take a look at the state of the team and see where things are going well and where they aren’t. So I have decided to steal an employee review structure that my partner recently had to use at work. It’s a simple and straightforward concept, a thing that is great for me. It’s just three simple questions. What is something they should stop? What is something they should start? And what is something that they should continue to do? With that all said there’s no reason to linger or loiter or dilly dally. So, let’s get after it.
Something to Stop – The Penalty Thing is Getting Out of Hand
By and large I think fans tend to make too much of a thing about their teams taking penalties. Penalties are an inevitability for a number of reasons and coaching staffs emphasize them in practice accordingly. That emphasis reflects a simple fact regarding the penalty kill, it’s going to come up. That being said, the degree to which Anaheim seems hell bent on giving their opponents extra reps with the man advantage is so absurd it almost horseshoe theories itself into an act of altruism. The Ducks are the most penalized team in the NHL, and quite comfortably at that. In fact, per ESPN.com, the gap between them and the second most penalized team (72) is larger than the gap between second and fourteenth (61). That is, to use a technical term, not great!
According to Evolving-Hockey, Anaheim gives up the 7th most expected goals against per 60 minutes when shorthanded, a fact that is peppered over by the team having a middle of the pack penalty killing percentage thanks almost entirely to their 6th best save percentage when shorthanded. Greg Cronin and his staff have made significant and notable improvements to the Ducks defensive structure and execution but they are still far too reliant on goaltending to win games. That’s not likely to change anytime soon given how young the team’s best and/or most promising players are, but cutting down on the trips to the box is an easy way the team can make their own lives, and the lives of their goaltenders, a little bit easier.
Something to Start – The KonMari Method
Anaheim needs to start asking which players and prospects spark joy. Assistant General Manager, and local draft guru, Martin Madden and his staff have made 40 picks over the last five drafts. Of those 40 players, only three (Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, and Mason McTavish). have played more than 50 games. Now 9 of those picks are from the 2023 draft and by the end of this season I fully expect Leo Carlsson to have played 50 games, injury not withstanding. So let’s be a bit more fair and move the five year window backwards from 2019-2023 to 2018-2022. In that time, the Ducks have made 38 picks and the number of players to reach 50 games played jumps all the way up to… four (everyone say hello and thank you to Isac Lundestrom!). As is the case for Carlsson, 2022 10th overall pick Pavel Mintyukov will almost certainly hit 50 games this year seeing as how he’s appeared in every game this season to this point. Still, five players out of 38 or 40 picks over a five year period is something worth noting.
Now none of that is in an of itself all together concerning in so much as most draft picks never reach the NHL and even the ones who do can’t all stick around and have the long and fruitful careers we all want them to have. Still, the best way to fill out the bottom and top of the roster is through the draft. While there are always teams who have success after adding key players through trade or free agency, the fact remains that drafting and developing players is key. It also means that teams need space on the main roster that they can hand over to those young drafted players in order to develop them into meaningful depth pieces. And so we find ourselves at the point.
In the next few years Anaheim are going to need to start moving on from players that are a part of the roster now in order to make room for the players of the future. This includes notable veterans like Adam Henrique, Jakob Silfverberg, Cam Fowler, and even John Gibson to be sure, but it also includes young players who have either failed to live up to their potential like Max Jones and Isac Lundestrom, or players who have yet to even earn a serious look with the big club like Brayden Tracey and Jacob Perrault. These are tough decisions and there are inevitably going to be players who find their footing in new situations, but that doesn’t lessen their importance nor their necessity. A new day is dawning in Anaheim and not everyone is going to be around to see the sunrise.
Something to Keep Up – Stick to the Plan!
Earlier this month Ducks General Manager Pat Verbeek made an appearance on The Bob McCown Podcast where he spoke with John Shannon and Darren Millard. One of the comments he made that really stuck out to me was about where the team is at in their lifecycle. Special thanks to Derek Lee of The Sporting Tribune who transcribed Verbeek’s comments from the interview.
When asked rather directly about when this team should expect to find themselves in the playoffs he replies with an open ended time frame, “at least two years”. And I have to say, that might be the best thing I’ve heard Verbeek say since he’s been here. OK, that might be overstating it a fair bit but the larger point remains. This season started off great and and has since quickly devolved into a more familiar nightmare for Ducks’ fans, but that doesn’t inherently negate just how alluring that first 15 game stretch was for both fans and front office staff. They looked like real players for a minute there and given how much of it was on the back of Anaheim’s young core having an impact, both through their own efforts as well as their effect on their teammates, its not insane that a lesser GM would allow themselves to be seduced by those early returns.
Fortunately enough, Verbeek seems to get it. This team is not ready for primetime yet, and that’s honestly just fine. You can’t take forever to turn the corner, some of these picks and prospects are not going to stay with the Ducks in perpetuity, but rushing the process or trying to power out of it early can be just as detrimental to waiting too long, if not more so. For now Anaheim fans will have to look for improvement from the team in the little things and the slow climb out of the league’s basement, comforted at night by the knowledge that the head decision maker in Orange County isn’t anyone’s fool.