IRVINE, Calif. – Life on the road is nothing new for professional hockey players, but for the newest Anaheim Duck, Jacob Trouba, joining your new home on the road for a week before they’re actually home is a new experience.
“Obviously different,” Trouba said at Great Park Ice on Monday. “Joining on the road trip, it feels like the first day again coming here for the first time. It’s nice to get settled in here and get comfortable with things.”
With Orange County accommodations quickly settled–no, he’s not staying with high school teammate Frank Vatrano–Trouba has worked on getting acclimated to the line-up and a new group in the locker room ahead of his home debut.
Anaheim hosts the league-leading Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday night at Honda Center.
In grading his first four games with the team, Trouba said that the Ducks are in a position right now where “you’ve got to look at the process not as much as the result.” Trouba said that process and Anaheim’s work ethic across three one-goal games of the four-game trip were consistent.
“I don’t think work ethic is the problem here, from what I’ve seen,” Trouba said. “I think that’s a good spot to start from. If guys work hard, want to play, want to get better and want to learn, I think that’s a good spot for an organization to be in.”
On the ice, Trouba has been what Ducks coach Cronin and general manager Pat Verbeek had envisioned. The right-handed defensemen has brought a bit of balance to the blueline, and Trouba has been engaged to keep pucks alive at the offensive blueline and kill plays on the wall in the defensive zone.
“The image of him is a big physical guy that has violent collisions,” Cronin said, “and what you see with him is what you’d see in most veterans. He’s poised with the puck. He’s able to be a little patient on breakouts and find the middle slips, make those right decisions under pressure.”
Ex-New York Rangers teammate Ryan Strome said that Trouba has been able to step into the Ducks system easily because Anaheim plays a more straight line style that fits Trouba’s game better than the “wheeling and dealing” of the Rangers.
“In talking to some of the players that have played with him, he’s spoken about the structure here is pretty visible,” Cronin said. “It’s kind of a simple game for him to read, and like most players, he’ll get better as it goes on.”
Off the ice, the transition from the Rangers to the Ducks has felt pretty seamless, with familiar faces in Vatrano and Strome and some road trip bonding, including a team dinner and drinks when Trouba met the team in Montreal.
“I think we have a fun group in here,” Strome said. “We have a good time. We work hard, and I think for him, it’s a little bit of a fresh start, it seems like. A big weight off his back. He comes into a group that has a lot of good banter, and he’s a guy that likes that stuff. I think he fits in pretty good.”
Trouba also got a strong first impression of Ducks coach Greg Cronin.
“He’s consistent across the board with what he expects from everyone,” Trouba said. “I think that message was pretty clear coming in here. He expects a lot, and I think guys work pretty hard for him.”
Overall, Trouba’s main mindset coming into his new situation was not to overthink things too much. Whether its changing his focus from a supposed contender in the Rangers to the rebuilding Ducks or figuring out how the defensive pairings would shake out, Trouba is keeping things straightforward for now.
“It’s going to take a little time for adjust,” Trouba said. “Practice will help, and no practice was a little tough in the first week. Going out and doing that, learning the terminology and how they go about things here is going to help. Every day is going to get a little bit better.”
With two full home practices under his belt, Trouba and the Ducks will get a stress test against the league-leading Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday.
Trouba was the ninth overall pick of the Jets in 2012 and spent his first six seasons in Winnipeg.