The Controversial Rebuild Of The Anaheim Ducks

The Controversial Rebuild Of The Anaheim Ducks

The Anaheim Ducks haven’t made the playoffs since 2018. It’s been a long time since the prime years of Ryan Getslaugh and Cory Perry when they were legitimate contenders. They’ve made lots of organizational changes since to properly prepare to get back to the postseason. Pat Verbique took over as just the franchise’s second GM since 2008 in 2022. Lots of his moves in the time since have been controversial. He’s made trades people haven’t liked. He’s made draft choices people haven’t liked. And he’s hired people that people haven’t liked. Despite what people may say, he’s gotten the Ducks going pretty good this season. They’re playing way above expectations early. While it also looks like a lot of their young players are exploding into stardom. So today, let’s take a look at the recent moves in history of the Anaheim Ducks, a young team that may be a contender sooner than expected. Three seasons ago, the Anaheim Ducks were the absolute worst team in the NHL, 32nd of 32. They were 31st in goals scored and 32nd in goals against. Bad on all fronts, an impressively weak team. Obviously, things needed to change. Two of that team’s top three scorers and their starting goalie have since all been traded. Pat Verbbeek has been one of the more active GMs around the league since he’s taken over. He’s made 37 trades in that time frame, including moving all of those top players from that 2023 team, Trevor Ziggress, John Gibson, and Cam Fowler within the past calendar year. The Zagris trade was pretty unpopular. Lots of fans liked him and the value they got for a guy that at one point looked like a franchise piece was pretty underwhelming. It’s tough to justify moving a 24year-old with that much potential, even if the Ducks have plenty of other young forwards. John Gibson is someone who had been part of rumors practically his whole career. It wasn’t a shock to see him moved, especially when Lucas Dostall started to step into more responsibility each season. Cam Fowler had been the team’s top defenseman pretty much all of his 15-year career. A mid-season move to St. Louis definitely came as a sign of change. In the same time frame in which they were selling off a lot of their guys, the Ducks were also picking up veterans. Chris Krider, Jacob Trouba, even Ryan Paling is the key piece of the Zeus deal. It seems to contradict Verbique selling off the guys that he did. still very useful players. But maybe that’s too black and white of a way of looking at it. No question moving Zegris, Gibson, and Fowler had a huge impact on the team’s culture. Trevor Zegress is obviously a huge personality, one of the more talked about players around the league. Gibson had been a key player and voice in that locker room for 12 years, Fowler for 15. Maybe all of these moves were about finally changing and moving towards winning again to a winning culture. It’s more about the specific outgoing players and the specific players coming in. Krider and Trouba are still high in the lineup, but maybe not the star players they used to be. Krider has taken a spot on the Ducks top line, and Trouba has become the team’s top right-handed defenseman. Both are there to compliment Anaheim star players and both are much better off this season because of it. The star of the Anaheim Ducks for now and into the future is Leo Carlson. He was the first of Verbique’s surprising draft decisions. At the time, Adam Fantelli was the heavy favorite to go second behind Connor Bedard. The Ducks taking Carlson was Verbique firmly putting his stamp on the team, taking a risk against the consensus. It’d be pretty hard to argue that they made the wrong decision. Now, Carlson has firmly established himself as a firstline center in the NHL. He’s still only 20 years old in just his third season, and he’s among league leaders in points. Krers played alongside Carlson for much of the season and both are benefiting greatly from it. Krider bouncing back from his awful past season and were getting the best version of Carlson we’ve seen yet. Jacob Trouba’s $8 million per season contract was looked at as a massive boat anchor by the end of his time in New York. This year in Anaheim, he’s become a stabilizing presence for some of their younger defenders. He’s been great alongside Olen Zelwiger and his offense looks like it’s rebounding towards the numbers of his best years with the Jets. Despite what people said about these moves, Pat Verbbeek’s looking pretty good right now. Beyond the moves that had looked questionable at the time, Verbique has one big win that’s looked good from the moment he made the deal. Jaime Dale would have been just another name in Anaheim’s group of young defensemen. Capitalizing on his value in Philadelphia’s tough situation when they did to acquire Cutter Goceier has proven to be one of the best moves across the league in the past few seasons. Gochier is a big-bodied sniper in a league where finding those players is becoming increasingly rare. He’s scoring tons of goals out of the gate this season, including grabbing his first career hattick against the Florida Panthers. While his shooting percentage is way up from last season, so are his shots. He’s one of the highest volume shooters in the entire league at the moment. Someone that can be counted on for offensive chances each and every shift. We’ll have to get deeper into the season to see if the consistency is there, but Gochce is pretty much already a high-end firstline sniper. It’s kind of easy to overlook some of the bad moves in the moment when you make a move that good. And when even those bad moves end up being pretty good, you start to think that maybe Verbique has always known what he’s doing because a few of those other controversial moves are looking pretty good now, too. We can say now that Leo Carlson was obviously the right decision for the Ducks at second overall. Even more shocking was the year that followed. To everyone’s surprise, including the man himself, Beckett Senica went third overall. At the time, it seemed crazy that Senakica went that high. Most public rankings had him far below many other top wingers. We now know that Columbus probably would have snapped him up with the very next pick, and they would have been right to do so as well. Senica has had an excellent start to his career on this high-flying offense. As a rookie, he’s competing right alongside those same guys that went high up in his draft class. With him and all these other exciting players, the Ducks have built something truly special. The Anaheim Ducks are both the youngest team in the NHL and one of the best. After a 21point improvement in the standings from year to year last season, it looks like they’ve taken yet another huge leap. The superstars deserve most of the credit for that. Carlson is playing well above in 100 point pace, set to crush his careerh high of 45. He’s been every bit as good as Anaheim could have hoped when they put so much faith in him at the draft. Goier has established himself as an NHL star, taking a huge step forward to become one of the NHL’s premier snipers and volume shooters. Jackson Lome has fully taken over as the team’s top defenseman, averaging three more minutes per night as opposed to last year. He’s making that new $9 million contract extension look good on the Ducks. And Ostall has slid into that clear-cut starting goalie role seamlessly. The team’s older voices deserve credit, too, though. They’ve been through the Ducks recent failures and guided the team through the massive roster overhaul and out to a more successful future. Troy Terry is their most valuable veteran. A star forward who has only ever known the Ducks at their weakest as a franchise. Now that Carlson has emerged as a superstar talent, Terry is reaping the benefits of playing on his wing. He’s been one of the team’s most important offensive play drivers for years and the leading scorer in two of their past four seasons. He’s the most impactful guy that stuck around into this new era of Ducks hockey and he’ll get to be one of the leaders of this next generation. Another important veteran for this team is Radco Gudis. Gudas was named captain before last season. He’s been in charge through both of their big leaps forward. He’s obviously far from the most talented player on the Ducks roster, but everyone who watches knows what Gudis brings. Sometimes it’s higher in the lineup. Sometimes they’re more valuable than he is. But every contender and championship team has a guy that can provide the kinds of things that Gudis does. He’s a valuable piece as a 35-year-old veteran who’s mentoring and leading a young team. The Anaheim Ducks are at the top of the Pacific Division right now. The Pacific Division is also one of the weaker divisions in the NHL. Calgary is quite possibly the worst team in the league. Seattle and Vancouver are both pretty mid. Even a phenomenal start from Mlin Celibbrini isn’t enough to make the Sharks legitimately good. Three teams are guaranteed to make the playoffs. And so that probably falls to Anaheim, Edmonton, Los Angeles, or Vegas. All of those other teams have struggled out of the gate a lot more than Anaheim. They’re estimated in the high 80% to make the postseason at the moment, about as high as any team. That’s a substantial increase from their preseason projections, which had them estimated around 85 points in the standings and firmly out of the playoffs. The Anaheim Ducks are absolutely crushing expectations led by many players that they took chances on when the consensus was that it wouldn’t work out. To this point, basically every risk for Beak has taken has paid off. Chris Krider and Jacob Trouba have been excellent to start the season. Cutter Goceier, Beckett Senica, and Leo Carlson are instrumental parts of the franchise’s future, and it’s hard to feel bad about the guys they moved on from when they’ve started this strong. If the Ducks can keep up this kind of form, they’re going to be back in the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons. And there’s few teams that are going to be capable of containing this offense.

The Anaheim Ducks are one of the league’s hottest teams to start the season. They haven’t been this good for a very long time. Rickard Rakell, Ryan Getzlaf, and Corey Perry were the leading scorers the last time this team made the post-season. Now, it’s Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Mason McTavish, and Jackson Lacombe’s team. Pat Verbeek hadn’t exactly cultivated the best reputation for himself as a GM building this team over the past few seasons. With these kinds of results though, maybe people were wrong to criticize all that he’s done. Today, we take a look at the controversial rebuild of the Anaheim Ducks, and what the team looks like now as they head towards a return to the playoffs.

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0:00 Intro
1:00 Learning To Win
3:40 Verbeek’s Stamp
7:14 Next Step Forward