Speculation: 2024-25 - Free Agency/Trade Thread

[tomd]

Yes, but I don’t see any of that making up the 12 points between the teams when there are 5 Ducks who should be healthy, and Gauthier being added should equal or surpass 18 year old Celebrini (for this year at any rate). They also have several players who pretty clearly aren’t meant to be on the team past February, which will should mean the typical spring falloff/collapse as well. I think they can be better, but I’m not seeing why people think they’re better than the Ducks NOW.

In fairness, I was responding to the question of why people thought the Sharks would be better THIS year than last year. I was not making a comment about whether or not they would be better than the Ducks. To that point, however, I think it could be close. SJ has a LOT of enthusiasm building from their off season which is cresting into the start of the season. That could very well carry them for a bit. The Ducks don't seem to have any enthusiasm building from the off season. We'll see what results look like on the ice for both teams.

 

[The Midnight Burrito]

This has been a rough off season.

 

[ohcomeonref]

This has been a rough off season.

At some point it's our fault for assuming there will be improvement

 

[The Midnight Burrito]

At some point it's our fault for assuming there will be improvement

Ironically PV did what he said he would - got a couple middling players. Henrique becomes Fabbri and Lyubushkin becomes Dumoulin. Our high draft pick - the reward for being terrible - is years away. That’s no real improvement over last season. So the team could improve but it has to come from the kids getting better, chemistry from there being relatively little turnover, better injury luck, or better coaching. Or some combination of those things.

Not impossible but not exciting to think about in August, especially after the worst season I’ve ever watched.

 

[70sSanO]

I guess I’m the only one looking who is looking forward to this year.

It is hard to imagine Zegras and Terry being as bad as last year.

Carlsson will hopefully stay healthy. Not a snowball’s chance I’d rather have Celebrini.

We will have a full season of Gauthier. Looking forward to Colangelo.

Hopefully Luneau is healthy.

Ducks are young, but they have a good degree of talent. Only disappointment might be Cronin’s inability to get the best out of them.

John

 

[Hockey Duckie]

I'm not expecting much from the team since it's another development season. But because it's a development season, then it's exciting looking at all the individual elements.

Appearance
1. At least we'll look good with the updated OG logo back on the front of the jersey. We'll be, in the words of Buzz Lightyear, "falling with style" if we lose games.

Player side
1. We get to see if last year's rookies improve this year: C Carlsson, G Dostal, LD Minty, LD LaCombe, LD Zellweger
2. We get a new rookie in Cutter. And if his FO skills are better than Carlsson, then Cutter will the much younger version of Rico for us in that respect.
3. Will Dostal unseat Gibby as 1G?
4. Will Mac become more disciplined and play better defense?
5. Can Vatrano score 30 goals again?!
6. Will Luneau make the NHL club or be called up at the TDL like Zell?

I'm more interested on our defensive rookies going into this year than Carlsson and Cutter b/c those blueliners did vastly improve our defensive play from the year prior. If the blueline improves, then that improves our chances of earning more points. I'm not worried about Z and Terry producing. Z proved he can score in Cronin's scheme later on in the season.

Coaching side
1. Will they run the youths into the ground again and make them injured or play injured? The Drysdale revelation that he severely injured his core on the first game with the Ducks, but kept playing on to make our GM and coaches feel good feels wrong. Also, what's up with our medical staff for not discovering it?
2. Will the team discipline improve? We gave up 91 goals on the PK, which is 24 more GA on the PK than the second worst PK team!
3. Will PK coach Thompson improve the PK unit? He wasn't great last year. The PK efficiency just kept dropping throughout the season.
4. Will HC Cronin develop a better ES offensive plan? It was a snooze fest last year and the numbers reflect it.

Coaching held us back last year. I hope it doesn't repeat itself again this year.

 

[TheGoodShepard1]

I'm not expecting much from the team since it's another development season. But because it's a development season, then it's exciting looking at all the individual elements.

Appearance
1. At least we'll look good with the updated OG logo back on the front of the jersey. We'll be, in the words of Buzz Lightyear, "falling with style" if we lose games.

Player side
1. We get to see if last year's rookies improve this year: C Carlsson, G Dostal, LD Minty, LD LaCombe, LD Zellweger
2. We get a new rookie in Cutter. And if his FO skills are better than Carlsson, then Cutter will the much younger version of Rico for us in that respect.
3. Will Dostal unseat Gibby as 1G?
4. Will Mac become more disciplined and play better defense?
5. Can Vatrano score 30 goals again?!
6. Will Luneau make the NHL club or be called up at the TDL like Zell?

I'm more interested on our defensive rookies going into this year than Carlsson and Cutter b/c those blueliners did vastly improve our defensive play from the year prior. If the blueline improves, then that improves our chances of earning more points. I'm not worried about Z and Terry producing. Z proved he can score in Cronin's scheme later on in the season.

Coaching side
1. Will they run the youths into the ground again and make them injured or play injured? The Drysdale revelation that he severely injured his core on the first game with the Ducks, but kept playing on to make our GM and coaches feel good feels wrong. Also, what's up with our medical staff for not discovering it?
2. Will the team discipline improve? We gave up 91 goals on the PK, which is 24 more GA on the PK than the second worst PK team!
3. Will PK coach Thompson improve the PK unit? He wasn't great last year. The PK efficiency just kept dropping throughout the season.
4. Will HC Cronin develop a better ES offensive plan? It was a snooze fest last year and the numbers reflect it.

Coaching held us back last year. I hope it doesn't repeat itself again this year.

I like how you didn't even mention Clune because just by his sheer existence, there's no way he can be worse than "Know-Nothing Newell."

 

[Hockey Duckie]

I like how you didn't even mention Clune because just by his sheer existence, there's no way he can be worse than "Know-Nothing Newell."

huh... Guess Brown's tenure really numbed my senses with our PP unit that I completely blacked it out of my mind. Brown was that bad! I'll add Clune in as a great thing to look forward to on the coaching side! According to his bio, Clune should be able to boost us up!

beginning his post-playing career as a Player Development Coach in 2022 and joining the Toronto Marlies of the American Hockey League (AHL) as Assistant Coach Nov. 29, 2023. In his first season behind the bench after joining partway through the 2023-24 campaign, Clune helped the Marlies to a Calder Cup Playoffs berth. The Marlies posted a 26-21-8 record after he joined as an Assistant Coach, while improving the power play dramatically from 13.0% (10-77) when he arrived to 21.9% (43-196) the remaining 55 games.

 

[ZegrassyKnoll]

Ironically PV did what he said he would - got a couple middling players. Henrique becomes Fabbri and Lyubushkin becomes Dumoulin. Our high draft pick - the reward for being terrible - is years away. That’s no real improvement over last season. So the team could improve but it has to come from the kids getting better, chemistry from there being relatively little turnover, better injury luck, or better coaching. Or some combination of those things.

Not impossible but not exciting to think about in August, especially after the worst season I’ve ever watched.

Is this a common sentiment? Last season was not enjoyable, but it was significantly better than 22-23 for me. I feel like I was actively avoiding games in March that year.

 

[duckpuck]

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. I don't think the "natural" tear down has to take longer. That's your assertion. I've been very consistent in my belief that the rebuild started with Z. I didn't move the goal posts, my point was that even if you have the high picks that if you miss with them well they won't help the rebuild. It's relevant to the strategy of bottoming out the team. I was trying to point out that even though we didn't pick top 5 we got 2 great talents with 9 and 6 which seem to be downplayed because they weren't top 3-5 picks.
As for Chicago, they At least made moves to try and make their team better. Something we haven't done. League expectations are that Chicago will be better than the Ducks. We'll see how the year turns out.

That's BS. We had plenty if first round picks outside of the Luck of winning the lottery do you really see their prospects as better than ours? There are 23 men on a roster. 1 great player helps but it's not the difference of playoffs and last place. It also ignores the PV did end up doing as you suggested, before they did. So we should still be ahead.

Edit: I misspoke. Chicago and Anaheim did their tear down at the same time. We jaut already had 1 3rd overall pick at the time already.

Both of the above posts implicitly assume (wrongly in my view) that the value of drafting higher is not important. It matters not just in the first round, but in others. The fact that the ducks got good players with lower picks doesn't change the fact that they missed out on some of the better players (such as Bedard).

I have stated that both SJ and Chicago have done a better job rebuilding both because they tore it down completely/aggressively and did a better job weaponizing cap space. Montreal too. In terms of this year, if Chicago is better, it will be because of Bedard.

Someone explain to me why people think San Jose will be a better team THIS year. Their kids are absolutely not ready to carry that team.

Is anyone saying that? I think the complimentary comments for SJ mostly reflect the fact that: (i) the got Celebrini (part luck); and (ii) they have done a good job tearing down their roster to get assets, including the assets needed to trade up to 11 for Dickinson.

This year is largely irrelevant for both the ducks and sharks. The question is the trajectory and how high a ceiling the rosters ultimately have (i.e., will the rebuild result in being a cup contender).

 

[Ducks DVM]

How am I moving goal posts? We did pick high and we did get high end talent. That's not really up for debate. I'm not asking them to emerge after 3-4 years I'm talking about it being year 7 and we haven't progressed at all. I'm saying that in the last 15 years 2 teams have spent more than 3 years out of a 5 year period in the bottom 5 of the standings and we're expected to be bottom 5 again making us the 3rd team. How does that sound okay to anyone? What that means to me is that it's entirely uncommon to not see forward progress in a rebuild after this long.

Buffalo isn’t one of those two teams, but they did pick top TWO in 4 out of 8 years, and still have no playoffs 3 years after the last one. Chicago didn’t win right after getting Toews and Kane without hitting on Keith,Seabrook, and Wisniewski 4-5 yers earlier (giving them the time to already be developed). A lot of how fast you emerge from being that bad is based on your depth drafting prior to the tank, and ours was iffy.

Can’t change history. No Verbeekening means probably an extended period of being Calgary style decade of finishing right above/right below the 8th seed. Burning it down to the bedrock means 3-5 years before your picks, IF they hit, start to make an impact. This is the 4th season since picking top 5, 4th if you want to slide to top 6. They’d be on the early end of expectations to not still be a bad team, and really, would it make a difference if they re 6th/7th worst this year? Top 5 is just an arbitrary number.

 

[Ducks DVM]

Is this a common sentiment? Last season was not enjoyable, but it was significantly better than 22-23 for me. I feel like I was actively avoiding games in March that year.

Last year was worse for me. The season before was bad but entertaining. Last season was bad and boring as hell.

 

[ZegrassyKnoll]

Last year was worse for me. The season before was bad but entertaining. Last season was bad and boring as hell.

Fascinating. I would have described them as the exact opposite of that.

 

[dracom]

Is this a common sentiment? Last season was not enjoyable, but it was significantly better than 22-23 for me. I feel like I was actively avoiding games in March that year.

the year before we had hopes of getting Bedard so it made all the losing more "tolerable". but goddamn last year was just f***ing awful to watch. no generational talent like Bedard to hope for, no offensively exciting players like Zegras, guys like Carlsson and Minty cooled off hard the last half of the season. there was absolutely nothing to enjoy about last season after November.

 

[ZegrassyKnoll]

the year before we had hopes of getting Bedard so it made all the losing more "tolerable". but goddamn last year was just f***ing awful to watch. no generational talent like Bedard to hope for, no offensively exciting players like Zegras, guys like Carlsson and Minty cooled off hard the last half of the season. there was absolutely nothing to enjoy about last season after November.

For me, Leo and Minty were exciting for the first half and then the two Zs made the second half of the season interesting, plus adding Colangelo + Gauthier for the last few games.

Every game of the season I had hope that at least one player would do something interesting. In 22-23 I would dread some games and, like I said, avoided watching entirely towards the end of the season. I had never done that before.

 

[tomd]

The tank thread was the place to be at the end of the 22/23 season

 

[JAHV]

I guess I’m the only one looking who is looking forward to this year.

It is hard to imagine Zegras and Terry being as bad as last year.

Carlsson will hopefully stay healthy. Not a snowball’s chance I’d rather have Celebrini.

We will have a full season of Gauthier. Looking forward to Colangelo.

Hopefully Luneau is healthy.

Ducks are young, but they have a good degree of talent. Only disappointment might be Cronin’s inability to get the best out of them.

John

Not the only one. I'm also excited to see what this year brings.

 

[TheGoodShepard1]

Is this a common sentiment? Last season was not enjoyable, but it was significantly better than 22-23 for me. I feel like I was actively avoiding games in March that year.

First 15-20 games or so, they legitimately looked like a half-decent NHL club (at even strength, special teams were still abysmal) before the injuries and every rookie (plus McTavish) hitting the wall at full speed (how much of that is on Cronin is TBD, we’re gonna find out this year), but for about a 40 game run there midseason, they bottomed out into extremely bad Carlyle-February 2019 territory (though not historically bad like they were the year prior and without the quitting). The hope is the young guys not only show natural progression for being a year older, but that they have also acclimated to an 82-game schedule.

 

[JAHV]

Fascinating. I would have described them as the exact opposite of that.

Agreed. They were getting outshot 2-to-1 most nights under Eakins. It was unwatchable. And Carlsson himself was worth a watch when he was in the lineup.

 

[Ducks DVM]

First 15-20 games or so, they legitimately looked like a half-decent NHL club (at even strength, special teams were still abysmal) before the injuries and every rookie (plus McTavish) hitting the wall at full speed (how much of that is on Cronin is TBD, we’re gonna find out this year), but for about a 40 game run there midseason, they bottomed out into extremely bad Carlyle-February 2019 territory (though not historically bad like they were the year prior and without the quitting). The hope is the young guys not only show natural progression for being a year older, but that they have also acclimated to an 82-game schedule.

That’s the thing though, the Eakins team was the one that didn’t quit. They were MUCH better about getting to extra time. 7-9 in OT and 3-3 in the shootout vs 5-3 in OT and 1-2 in the shootout - 24 extra time games vs 11.

They were a bad team, but there were MANY more games where I was bored out of my kind last season and actually contemplating leaving, which I never do. You can absolutely win and be boring, LA has made an art form out of it.

 

[Trojans86]

I guess I’m the only one looking who is looking forward to this year.

It is hard to imagine Zegras and Terry being as bad as last year.

Carlsson will hopefully stay healthy. Not a snowball’s chance I’d rather have Celebrini.

We will have a full season of Gauthier. Looking forward to Colangelo.

Hopefully Luneau is healthy.

Ducks are young, but they have a good degree of talent. Only disappointment might be Cronin’s inability to get the best out of them.

John

The whiners are just more vocal

 

[Boo Boo]

this last year was a special kind of torture even if just because we had to watch our prospective stars and veterans alike get clobbered onto the ir one after the other

Then there’s the coaching staff crashing right out of the gate: failing to implement an effective system before we succumbed to injuries, stalling our young stars offensively, and whatever system we got was just plain boring. All while appearing completely confounded after heavy losses

All we can really do is trust that the culture actually is improving as much as the front office is trying to tell us but like, dam what a tough year.

 

[Trojans86]

The tank thread was the place to be at the end of the 22/23 season

At that time there was no hope. Things are different now.

 

[Ducks DVM]

this last year was a special kind of torture even if just because we had to watch our prospective stars and veterans alike get clobbered onto the ir one after the other

Then there’s the coaching staff crashing right out of the gate: failing to implement an effective system before we succumbed to injuries, stalling our young stars offensively, and whatever system we got was just plain boring. All while appearing completely confounded after heavy losses

All we can really do is trust that the culture actually is improving as much as the front office is trying to tell us but like, dam what a tough year.

I have two hopes for Cronin.

1 - stop the idiotic two-a-days - these aren’t college kids. I think many of the worst injuries and the lethargic play of the 30+ players can be directly attributed to that.

2 - please stop making Ferraris play like Ford 150’s. You can have more than that one play. Use your defensemen to do more than dump the damned puck.

 

[Hockey Duckie]

Buffalo isn’t one of those two teams, but they did pick top TWO in 4 out of 8 years, and still have no playoffs 3 years after the last one. Chicago didn’t win right after getting Toews and Kane without hitting on Keith,Seabrook, and Wisniewski 4-5 yers earlier (giving them the time to already be developed). A lot of how fast you emerge from being that bad is based on your depth drafting prior to the tank, and ours was iffy.

Can’t change history. No Verbeekening means probably an extended period of being Calgary style decade of finishing right above/right below the 8th seed. Burning it down to the bedrock means 3-5 years before your picks, IF they hit, start to make an impact. This is the 4th season since picking top 5, 4th if you want to slide to top 6. They’d be on the early end of expectations to not still be a bad team, and really, would it make a difference if they re 6th/7th worst this year? Top 5 is just an arbitrary number.

Murray's mistake in drafting was being forward biased between 2016-2018. We drafted only two defensemen during the three drafts in Mahura (Rd 3, 2016) and Drew (Rd 6, 2018), but Drew transitioned into becoming a forward. Murray forced himself into drafting forwards, using the many darts to find one or two that stick in preparation of the Twins retiring. Unfortunately, the highest pick the Ducks owned was #23 in the 2018 draft (Lundy), followed by #24 & #30 in the 2016 draft (Jones and Steel respectively), and no 1st round pick in 2017. Lundy is the only forward that remains from that draft set. We strayed away from our scouting bread and butter with d-men.

The moment Murray went back to a balanced draft, we were hitting on defensemen!

• 2019
  • Rd 2. LD LaCombe
    (I have no info about LaCombe playing RD in high school, but he did in college)
  • Rd 4. LD Thrun

• 2020
  • Rd 1. RD Drysdale
  • Rd 3. RD Moore (potentially, both Murray and Verbeek are high on him)

• 2021
  • Rd 2. LD/RD Zellweger
  • Rd 3. LD/RD Hinds (potentially)

Drysdale got in 24 NHL games in as an 18-year old. LaCombe and Thrun were full time NHL'ers last year, 2023-24 season. Zellweger and Hinds went pro (AHL) last year. Moore is a senior in college. Drafting is important beyond the top-10, but it might take years to see their fruition... if they develop.

Because Verbeek's pro scouting acquisitions were mostly not great to abysmal the past two seasons, I shudder to think how the team would have progressed if Verbeek bypassed the Verbeekening. Anaheim should not be rushing some prospects, but Verbeek has. The Verbeekening gave Verbeek years to mask mistakes. Hopefully, he can figure things out by year 4 and 5.