Speculation: 2024-25 - Free Agency/Trade Thread

[anezthes]

For selfish reasons, I hope he plays at least another 26 games with the Ducks.

 

[Zegs2sendhelp]

For selfish reasons, I hope he plays at least another 26 games with the Ducks.

Meh as soon as there is a decent offer on the table, take it and run.

 

[ZegrassyKnoll]

Looking at our projected lineup I see the Ducks essentially icing an AHL team and 100% banking on our prospects' progression or improvements in execution. I don't see the latter because Cronin hasn't shown that he is able work with what he has and maximizing his players talents with any strategy. I don't expect the team to establish any identity or improve execution in areas such as the power play with them making decisions like having Zegras play on the PK, or probably playing Dumoulin on the PP.

I feel this strategy is not an ideal environment for our prospects and will be exacerbated if we see Fowler traded before the season starts which would signal to the players that the season is over before it even started.

This is just silly. Not that we're some all-star group but what AHL team has more than a dozen seasoned NHL players? The only time this line rings somewhat true is when we get devastated by injury.

Of course we are banking on prospects improving. That's what emerging from a rebuild depends on.

I swear these last few years have completely broken some of your guys' spirits.

 

[Bergey37]

I'm excited about our prospects' progression and I think we're going to see a positive influence from Cronin this year. New assistant coaches will mean better special teams.

This is a great environment for our prospects to thrive since there are good veteran leaders to guide them, but they'll get significant opportunities to learn at the NHL level, which is where most of them belong. The results will be mixed, but I think they finish somewhere in the 75 - 80 point range this season, and games will be a lot more fun to watch.

I fundamentally agree with this position and am looking forward to watching much more exciting games. I think it unfair to make ANY judgments based on last season's performance, mainly because of the magnitude of the in jury problem. My biggest gripe last season was that the team appeared to have no chemistry, no cohesion right from the get-go. I don't know how much of this was due to injuries or to mixed signals from the coaching staff, but I;m looking for big improvement this season. Just get everybody on the same page - the talent is there.

 

[Leonardo87]

 

[Firequacker]

No one can say for sure that Cronin's conditioning plan is what caused Z and Drysdale's injuries. It COULD HAVE been a factor, but saying it was the reason is an agenda-driven reach.

Of course you can't put it 100% on Cronin, but he himself did say he suspects the fact that they went full throttle out of the gate was a lot of it. He puts it on them (well, specifically Drysdale, then extrapolates to Zegras) being hundred mile an hour guys, but what is "we're gonna have full practices on game days" but demanding full throttle out of the gate?

https://x.com/i/web/status/1725620048696631350

It's not like nobody could possibly predict that there was risk to letting them go full throttle too fast. That's intuitive, and Cronin is a hockey veteran who can ID the issue after the fact. But he doesn't seem to have given any thought to managing the two most obvious risk cases beforehand.

Which, don't get me wrong, there's only so much the coaches can do to tell a guy not to go too hard right away. But there was also a preseason game where Zegras played 24 minutes (and Fowler played 25, there was a comment earlier in the thread that I can't find now about how obviously that would never happen in preseason but it certainly did). That's a coaching decision which looks pretty questionable when combined with 'maybe they should've ramped up slowly'.
It's reasonable enough to put a good deal of responsibility for those injuries on Cronin, IMO, even if "his plan caused them" is overly reductive.

(Honestly, I'd be interested to know how much Coach Accountability Through a Firehose would have accepted "we just got here because of contract stuff, let us start at 50%" as anything more than a them problem, but that's purely speculation.)

 

[All Mighty]

To be fair, this isn’t training camp. I know it’s not the exact same situation, but I remember last year people were excited that Zegras and Drysdale were here at this time. Then once main camp started, they flew back to their home towns.

 

[Zegs2sendhelp]

To be fair, this isn’t training camp. I know it’s not the exact same situation, but I remember last year people were excited that Zegras and Drysdale were here at this time. Then once main camp started, they flew back to their home towns.

Crazy the team demoted fowler to Rookie

 

[Deuce22]

Of course you can't put it 100% on Cronin, but he himself did say he suspects the fact that they went full throttle out of the gate was a lot of it. He puts it on them (well, specifically Drysdale, then extrapolates to Zegras) being hundred mile an hour guys, but what is "we're gonna have full practices on game days" but demanding full throttle out of the gate?

https://x.com/i/web/status/1725620048696631350

It's not like nobody could possibly predict that there was risk to letting them go full throttle too fast. That's intuitive, and Cronin is a hockey veteran who can ID the issue after the fact. But he doesn't seem to have given any thought to managing the two most obvious risk cases beforehand.

Which, don't get me wrong, there's only so much the coaches can do to tell a guy not to go too hard right away. But there was also a preseason game where Zegras played 24 minutes (and Fowler played 25, there was a comment earlier in the thread that I can't find now about how obviously that would never happen in preseason but it certainly did). That's a coaching decision which looks pretty questionable when combined with 'maybe they should've ramped up slowly'.
It's reasonable enough to put a good deal of responsibility for those injuries on Cronin, IMO, even if "his plan caused them" is overly reductive.

(Honestly, I'd be interested to know how much Coach Accountability Through a Firehose would have accepted "we just got here because of contract stuff, let us start at 50%" as anything more than a them problem, but that's purely speculation.)

I agree with this completely. Was responding to another poster who has an Eakins is better than Cronin agenda. Not correct to say that injuries were caused by Cronin’s approach, but fair to question whether it could have been a factor.

 

[KaseMeOutside]

Of course you can't put it 100% on Cronin, but he himself did say he suspects the fact that they went full throttle out of the gate was a lot of it. He puts it on them (well, specifically Drysdale, then extrapolates to Zegras) being hundred mile an hour guys, but what is "we're gonna have full practices on game days" but demanding full throttle out of the gate?

https://x.com/i/web/status/1725620048696631350

It's not like nobody could possibly predict that there was risk to letting them go full throttle too fast. That's intuitive, and Cronin is a hockey veteran who can ID the issue after the fact. But he doesn't seem to have given any thought to managing the two most obvious risk cases beforehand.

Which, don't get me wrong, there's only so much the coaches can do to tell a guy not to go too hard right away. But there was also a preseason game where Zegras played 24 minutes (and Fowler played 25, there was a comment earlier in the thread that I can't find now about how obviously that would never happen in preseason but it certainly did). That's a coaching decision which looks pretty questionable when combined with 'maybe they should've ramped up slowly'.
It's reasonable enough to put a good deal of responsibility for those injuries on Cronin, IMO, even if "his plan caused them" is overly reductive.

(Honestly, I'd be interested to know how much Coach Accountability Through a Firehose would have accepted "we just got here because of contract stuff, let us start at 50%" as anything more than a them problem, but that's purely speculation.)

Hold on a second, what is this full practices on game day thing

 

[JAHV]

Hold on a second, what is this full practices on game day thing

Preseason training.

 

[Dr Johnny Fever]

Well, seems to me Verbeek doesn’t sound like a guy who’s worried he needs to keep Cam around to shelter the young guys.

 

[The Midnight Burrito]

Well, seems to me Verbeek doesn’t sound like a guy who’s worried he needs to keep Cam around to shelter the young guys.

Not surprising, given how the team’s been reconstructed. The “let em ripen” thing was just pie in the sky stuff.

 

[Gliff]

Well, seems to me Verbeek doesn’t sound like a guy who’s worried he needs to keep Cam around to shelter the young guys.

Based on?

 

[All Mighty]

A couple more Fowler tidbits from today’s Missin Curfew episode:

-Shane O’Brien said the Ducks organization reached out to him (O’Brien). He didn’t specify what exactly the conversation was about.
-Jordan Schmaltz did not back down from his reporting. He reiterated that someone from the Ducks told him this info.
-O’Brien, who is friends with Fowler, reached out to Cam to talk with him about it. He did not mention anything specific about their conversation.

 

[The Midnight Burrito]

A couple more Fowler tidbits from today’s Missin Curfew episode:

-Shane O’Brien said the Ducks organization reached out to him. He didn’t specify what exactly the conversation was about.

“him” who? O’Brien or Fowler?

 

[Kalv]

A couple more Fowler tidbits from today’s Missin Curfew episode:

-Shane O’Brien said the Ducks organization reached out to him. He didn’t specify what exactly the conversation was about.
-Jordan Schmaltz did not back down from his reporting. He reiterated that someone from the Ducks told him this info.
-O’Brien, who is friends with Fowler, reached out to Cam to talk with him about it. He did not mention anything specific about their conversation.

So they talked to Fowler and our org and nobody's addressing/commenting the inital rumor? Then it sounds true

 

[Dr Johnny Fever]

Based on?

Based on the talk from Friedman that Cam has agreed to expand his lit of trade teams to double digits from only 4. Verbeek wouldn't even be having those talks with Cam if he felt Cam indispensable.

 

[All Mighty]

“him” who? O’Brien or Fowler?

O’Brien. Sorry, that definitely wasn’t clear. I’ll edit the original post. I’m guessing they either told O’Brien to chill out with the rumor stuff or they tried to figure out where the info came from.

 

[TheStuntman]

At this point in the season, it'll be tough to complete a trade due to his cap hit and with all of the teams having their roster mostly set for the start of preseason. While I have no issue with Cam staying, I just find the timing of this very curious. If Cam did want out, he should've asked for a trade during the summer and not before the start of preseason/camp. Maybe they did try earlier but due to Cam's NTC Verbeek couldn't find a workable trade and asked Cam to open to more teams. Just really strange/odd all around.

 

[cheesymc]

At this point in the season, it'll be tough to complete a trade due to his cap hit and with all of the teams having their roster mostly set for the start of preseason. While I have no issue with Cam staying, I just find the timing of this very curious. If Cam did want out, he should've asked for a trade during the summer and not before the start of preseason/camp. Maybe they did try earlier but due to Cam's NTC Verbeek couldn't find a workable trade and asked Cam to open to more teams. Just really strange/odd all around.

Really strange timing and doesn't make sense unless Verbeek is either too meticulous or just poor at executing timely...

 

[Gliff]

Based on the talk from Friedman that Cam has agreed to expand his lit of trade teams to double digits from only 4. Verbeek wouldn't even be having those talks with Cam if he felt Cam indispensable.

Youre drawing some big conclusions from some rumors. And even if the rumors are true, youre reading into it with some major confirmation bias.

I could just as easily say that Verbeek required him to up his NT list because Verbeek views Cam as so important that he wasn't willing to dump him for nothing to the 4 teams on his list.

I think it's safe to say anything could be possible and we should be careful drawing conclusions from rumors.

 

[Zegs2sendhelp]

Youre drawing some big conclusions from some rumors. And even if the rumors are true, youre reading into it with some major confirmation bias.

I could just as easily say that Verbeek required him to up his NT list because Verbeek views Cam as so important that he wasn't willing to dump him for nothing to the 4 teams on his list.

I think it's safe to say anything could be possible and we should be careful drawing conclusions from rumors.

Cam saw the writing on the wall and wanted to leave on bad terms

Toxic cam strikes again

 

[Gliff]

Cam saw the writing on the wall and wanted to leave on bad terms

Toxic cam strikes again

Personally I think he just hates Zegras' mullet.

 

[ZegrassyKnoll]

Not surprising, given how the team’s been reconstructed. The “let em ripen” thing was just pie in the sky stuff.

He's just taking the "put it in a brown paper bag to ripen it faster" approach.