who suffered an upper-body injury during Monday night\u2019s 5-4 loss to Toronto<\/a>.<\/p>\nNathan Gaucher made his NHL debut for the Ducks. He was selected 22nd overall by the Ducks in the 2022 draft.<\/p>\n
San Jose now has a 2-1 lead in the four-game regular-season series between the teams.<\/p>\n
More to come on this story.<\/p>\n
McQUEEN SIGNS AMATEUR TRYOUT OFFER<\/p>\n
Ducks lottery pick Roger McQueen moved a step closer to flying with the flock on Wednesday after the Providence College freshman signed an amateur tryout offer that will allow him to join the Ducks\u2019 top minor-league affiliate.<\/p>\n
McQueen, a skilled 6-foot-6-inch center, will report to the San Diego Gulls imminently now that the Friars were eliminated by Quinnipiac in the NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is exciting to welcome Roger to our organization to play professional hockey after a strong freshman season at Providence,\u201d Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said in a statement. \u201cRoger will gain valuable experience playing additional games in San Diego, which will be an important step in his development.\u201d<\/p>\n
McQueen, the 10th overall selection in last June\u2019s draft after his stint with the WHL\u2019s Brandon Wheat Kings, had 27 points in 36 games with a 55.1% faceoff percentage at Providence. He was one of the first prospects to take advantage of the new CHL-NCAA parameters that allow Canadian junior players to cross over into the U.S. college ranks. Other top picks like Boston College\u2019s James Hagens, who signed an ATO with the Boston Bruins last month, and Gavin McKenna, the Penn State star expected to go No. 1 overall this year, also made that leap.<\/p>\n
One Hall of Fame defenseman and Stanley Cup champ described the arrangement as one that lets players develop as both competitors and people, giving them \u201cthe best of both worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in my time, you had to make that decision when you were 15 or 16 years old. If you wanted to play in Canadian hockey, in my case the (OHL) with Peterborough, you had to make that decision at a young age,\u201d said former Ducks star Chris Pronger, who was recruited by top college programs like Maine, Michigan and North Dakota.\u00a0 \u201cWhether you were sure or not about it being the right or wrong decision, you might make a mistake at that young age.\u201d<\/p>\n
McQueen was part of one of the more memorable draft moments in recent years, when after the Ducks selected him he was whisked away from Downtown L.A. to Downtown Disney, taking a helicopter ride to \u201cthe happiest place on earth\u201d immediately after shaking hands and taking photos as a top-10 pick.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything that went on there was crazy, it was so cool. It was something I\u2019ll never forget, those first 72 hours,\u201d McQueen said.<\/p>\n
McQueen slipped in the draft \u2013 he had been projected by many to go in the top 5 earlier in his career \u2013 due to a back injury that limited him to just 17 games in his draft year. No longer taking long bus rides through rough weather and now having access to state-of-the-art training, McQueen didn\u2019t miss a single game at Providence this season. In addition to traditional strength building and injury prevention, McQueen has integrated yoga and pilates into his regimen.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a misdiagnosis back when I was in my second season with Brandon, around February, near the playoffs. They had said it was just disk issues \u2013 they thought there were two bulging disks \u2013 so I rehabbed it (accordingly), which didn\u2019t end up doing much,\u201d McQueen said. \u201cThen I figured out later that it was a fracture. I had two really good doctors treating that and fixed that up. Since then, I\u2019ve been doing tons of core work to stabilize those muscles to make sure that can\u2019t happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given free-agent addition Mikael Granlund\u2019s age and the recently re-signed Mason McTavish\u2019s inconsistency, McQueen\u2019s development behind top center Leo Carlsson might have gone from luxury to necessity. He plays a rangy, rugged game that has been compared with one of the great Ducks in franchise history.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve always said Ryan Getzlaf for a player comp, so that\u2019s pretty cool with him being such a veteran and all-time great here,\u201d McQueen said.<\/p>\n
UP NEXT<\/p>\n
The Ducks return home to host St. Louis on Friday at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
Andrew Knoll contributed to this story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN JOSE \u2014 Macklin Celebrini tied the score with less than two minutes to play then assisted on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":536102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5127],"tags":[233,5,4,519,168,5306,5305,1780,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-536101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-jose-sharks","8":"tag-anaheim-ducks","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-san-jose","12":"tag-san-jose-sharks","13":"tag-sanjose","14":"tag-sanjosesharks","15":"tag-sharks","16":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116333680730811796","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=536101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/536101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/536102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=536101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=536101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=536101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}