As the Ducks were on their way to the 2026 postseason\u2019s base camp, one franchise icon who climbed all the way to the summit in 2007 weighed in.<\/p>\n
Defenseman Chris Pronger \u2013 his r\u00e9sum\u00e9 includes not only that \u201807 Stanley Cup but a Hart Trophy, a Norris Trophy and gold medals at the Olympics, World Championships and World Juniors \u2013 not only elevated the Ducks with his acquisition two decades ago, but also crossed paths with current coach Joel Quenneville and general manager Pat Verbeek well before either of them had an office on Katella Avenue.<\/p>\n
Today, Pronger has become a media maven and motivational speaker, recently appearing at Honda Center for a game against the St. Louis Blues ahead of the release of his new book, \u201cEarned,\u201d which came out Tuesday.<\/p>\n
It was a clash between the clubs with whom he experienced his highest individual success, completing the Bobby Orr-esque feat of winning league MVP from the blue line, and achieved the ultimate feat as a group.<\/p>\n
Now, he sees the Ducks at the outset of another potential ascent to the pinnacle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat goes up must come down, and what goes down must come up. When we look at cycles now in the National Hockey League, they certainly had bottomed out,\u201d Pronger said to the Southern California News Group, referring to the Ducks\u2019 seven consecutive drafts picking in the top 10.<\/p>\n
Of those seven selections, five are still with the organization and at least two appear to be part of its nucleus. A sixth was traded for another central figure in the Ducks\u2019 crescendo, leading scorer Cutter Gauthier, who was a top-five pick of another of Pronger\u2019s former teams, the Philadelphia Flyers. He, Leo Carlsson and Beckett Sennecke, at a minimum, appear to be legitimate cornerstones.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to pick high. It\u2019s another thing to get those players, to hit on those players, and get them to develop and play at the highest level,\u201d Pronger said.<\/p>\n
Pronger said the timing of a team\u2019s cycle had roughly as much to do with its ability to make good on the opportunities that emerge from lean years as its blueprint, with fortune and design dovetailing in the most successful rebuilds.<\/p>\n
\u201cA, you\u2019ve gotta have a vision. B, a lot of it is luck. It\u2019s where you fall in the draft, and then who\u2019s available in that draft. Some years there\u2019s a generational talent, like a Matthew Schaefer or a Macklin Celebrini, and other years there\u2019s not,\u201d Pronger said.<\/p>\n
Pronger said that most teams hope to \u201cbuild through the center of the ice,\u201d via their top pivots, best defensemen and No. 1 goalie. Carlsson, a centerman, has completed at least one piece of that puzzle, with goalie Luk\u00e1\u0161 Dost\u00e1l and rearguard Jackson LaCombe showing vast promise of clicking a couple more into place.<\/p>\n
He also emphasized the role of management in creating a plan, rolling with its punches and filling out the periphery to get a strong core over the top.<\/p>\n
In Orange County, Verbeek rests atop the totem pole. He was Pronger\u2019s first captain when he broke into the league with the Hartford Whalers as a lottery pick. Pronger became Hartford\u2019s highest-paid player before he ever skated a stride for the Whalers, thanks in part to Verbeek.<\/p>\n
In his book, Pronger spoke of how he hunkered down at Verbeek\u2019s house, which was converted into a sort of war room for tense, time-sensitive contract negotiations ahead of the 1993-94 season.<\/p>\n
So, did those events foreshadow Verbeek\u2019s tenure and savvy as an executive?<\/p>\n
\u201cEven back then, he was always very involved in the NHLPA and the union. You could see that he was very analytical, very smart, very engaged from a CBA standpoint, and obviously he was a great player in his own right,\u201d Pronger said.\u00a0 \u201cYou know how he played the game and how hard he worked. I don\u2019t know if you can go that far, but you could certainly see that he had a keen interest in a lot of what kind of goes on behind the scenes, and the business side of the sport.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verbeek arrived late in the 2021-22 season and let Dallas Eakins coach out his contract. He then hired Greg Cronin, who oversaw a best-in-the-West leap of 21 points in the standings last year, before he brought in Quenneville last summer.<\/p>\n
Quenneville coached Pronger in St. Louis before they crisscrossed anew with the Panthers. Today, he has the Ducks up another 10 points over last year. If they\u2019re lucky, Pronger said, there could be some parallels with the squad that Quenneville lifted from lottery regular to three-time Stanley Cup champs in Chicago. There, Quenneville\u2019s triumphs were later tainted by an organizational scandal that left him barred by the league for several seasons prior to joining the Ducks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got a chance to be coached by him back in the day, in his first head coaching stint with St. Louis, and then I played against him for a number of years,\u201d said Pronger, whose Flyers lost to Quenneville\u2019s Blackhawks in the 2010 Stanley Cup Final. \u201cThen as I was rolling out of my management duties in Florida, he was coming in as head coach prior to everything that transpired with him. I\u2019m excited for him to get another opportunity to really steward those young players and that young team to that next level, similar to how he managed the Blackhawks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As the Ducks were on their way to the 2026 postseason\u2019s base camp, one franchise icon who climbed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":553669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[2210,233,5292,1739,5,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-553668","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim-ducks","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-ducks","10":"tag-anaheimducks","11":"tag-ducks","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl","14":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116412698157522169","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553668","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=553668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/553668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/553669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=553668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=553668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=553668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}