The Ducks improved their win total for the third consecutive season and missed the playoffs for the seventh consecutive season. There were improvements, sure, and the Ducks look like they’ve found some great pieces to form their young core, but inconsistent play, stifled offense and poor special teams ultimately capped the ceiling of a team that ranked third-last in goals per game but a modest 21st in total goals scored at 5-on-5.
Troy Terry led the team in scoring with a paltry 55 points in a high-scoring era, while Mason McTavish led the team with 22 goals. They ranked 104th and tied-102nd in the league in their categories, respectively. No Duck has scored more than 70 points in a single season since Ryan Getzlaf (73) in 2016-17, and since then have averaged the fewest goals per game (2.58). In fantasy, no team has offered worse options than the Ducks.
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GM Pat Verbeek promised to be “very active and aggressive” in free agency but managed to only sign Mikael Granlund, who’s coming off an excellent 66-point season but turns 34 in February. He’ll slot in nicely anywhere in the lineup, either as a center or winger, and his veteran presence and playmaking ability should give improve the Ducks’ power play from very poor to occasionally effective.
The biggest change, however, is replacing Greg Cronin with Joel Quenneville, who returns to the bench following his resignation from the Panthers in 2021. At the time, Quenneville was 79-40-13 (.648 P%) with the Panthers, including a 7-0-0 start to the 2021-22 season.
Under Quenneville, expect the Ducks offense and special teams to improve. Maintaining puck possession was a problem, and adding Chris Kreider and Granlund should help a lot.
The Ducks are an impressive 31-3-4 when scoring at least three goals, which is basically the league average. By improving their output to the league average – essentially 29 more total goals for than last season – we might be looking at a team in the playoff hunt in the final month of the season. Granlund and Kreider scored 44 goals combined last season, and subtracting Trevor Zegras’ 12 should get the Ducks pretty close to that target.
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However, the prospect of not having any players scoring at a point-per-game pace means the Ducks will feature a smattering of 50-60-point players. It’s a weird mix of young up-and-comers with veterans on the wrong side of 30. The Ducks’ rebuild is far from over, and they will surely pawn off their veterans for more futures at the right price.
Their best fantasy options will come from their blue line (Jackson LaCombe) and high-volume saves in net (Lukas Dostal), with two specialists in hits (Jacob Trouba, Radko Gudas).
Prediction:
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but the Ducks move slightly above .500 for the first time since 2017-18. Though Carlsson emerges as their top center and leads the team in scoring, no Duck finishes with more than 70 points for the 10th straight season. Gauthier leads the team in goals but falls short of 30, LaCombe’s goal total drops to below 10 but makes up for it in assists for his second straight 40-point season, and Dostal ranks in the top five in both saves and save percentage and garners Vezina votes for the first time in his career.
All stats courtesy of naturalstattrick.com, moneypuck.com, hockeyviz.com, allthreezones.com, hockey-reference.com, eliteprospects.com unless otherwise noted.