This is to not rush Sennecke. Let him earn a spot, you can always move Colangelo (or put him on the 4th line again I guess) if he has nothing left to do in juniors. But he may still need some strength/muscle. No reason to give him a spot before he's ready. All of our guys have been skipping AHL and maybe he's ready next year, but he won't be as good as Rantanen/Marner next year. "Worst case" scenario, you get a couple of Fabbri level guys and run pairs. McTavish and Cutter, Strome and Terry, Carlsson and Sennecke, Z and Colangelo or something like that.
Speculation: 2024-25 Roster thread
- Thread starter Leonardo87
- Start date
You have to weigh that against him simply ripping the OHL up. I wouldn't be against the limited, conditional Verbeek approach with him vs him just scoring on kids again.
Hockey Duckie
Registered User
Sennecke can learn how to play off-the-puck as well as vastly improve his defensive play in juniors with his added muscles/weight gain during this summer.
The Midnight Burrito
True Fan
Within 2 years if they keep allowing this we’ll be back to the depths of late 90s/early 2000s hockey. Sucks that we will have missed an entire high-scoring era by being totally offensively inept.
Man, the blueline is kind of exciting moving forward.
There are still Solberg and hopefully some of Luneau, Hinds, Warren turns out good too
www.thesportingtribune.com
There are still Solberg and hopefully some of Luneau, Hinds, Warren turns out good too
The Sporting Tribune
www.thesportingtribune.com
Hockey Duckie
Registered User
Man, the blueline is kind of exciting moving forward.
There are still Solberg and hopefully some of Luneau, Hinds, Warren turns out good too
The Sporting Tribune
Helleson looking good since being called up has affected the ice time of our LD youths. That put all three youth LD's on a rotation when Fowler returned, even LaCombe was healthy scratched. That problem remained when we swapped out Fowler with Trouba, but the three youth rotations changed to Minty, Zell, and Helly.
I get that Verbeek wants Trouba to be that vet bridge on the blue line with 34-year old RD Gudas under contract until next year and 33-year old LD/RD Dumo being an UFA after this season, but it puts the development on the back burner for a couple of months. A couple of months if Dumo is traded at the TDL. Longer if Dumo isn't traded.
I do feel bad for our youths being healthy scratched during all this. They went from playing as well as developing often last year and this year to fighting for ice time, third pairing minutes at that too. The direction changed by the org after a season and a half from development to trying to win with the vet pairing of Dumo-Trouba. And because the Ducks have no vet D in the AHL, they cannot send down a youth D. In the AHL, they would at least get top-4 minutes.
Deuce22
Registered User
No one is developing getting scratched every time they make a mistake. But it is what it is. Coach trusting vets to win games during a rebuild isn’t ideal. That’s on Verbeek.
MMC
Global Moderator
This dude is such a bozo
Ducks DVM
sowcufucakky
Re-sign your #2 goal scorer to an extension, immediately move him to a line with a center who cannot finish
robbieboy3686
Registered User
- Jan 17, 2016
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He’s been very vocal that “ no matter what”
Vatrano is being traded even though we should’ve traded him last deadline. He isn’t the type to be humble and happy for this signing, instead ass hurt for being wrong. He’s also a smaller human being whos taken zellwegger another smaller human being thats been healthy scratched lately, very personally. It’s been a rough stretch for jake. Vatrano is smaller too, why can’t he just be happy for him? (Troll meme face)
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Not sure who is worse him or his buddy Felix.
Firequacker
used wall of text! It's not very effective...
- Jun 3, 2022
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Even by his own metrics this is dumb. Their xGF% is down to 49.80%, oh no, time to pull out the blender! (They have an actual GF% of 51.52%, incidentally, but why would we care what actually happens in the games?)
Even if you specifically exclude Leason, Killorn and Carlsson together have a lower xGF% than that (48.17%), but keeping them together is more important I guess.
Also, typical attention to detail getting Leason, Johnston, and Nesterenko all on the wrong wings even though they're all on the same line. I know the bottom six doesn't count to these guys any more than the real game stats do but man, at least try.
Something to keep in mind about this team and its youngsters.
Lacombe is having a stellar breakout. Remember how much he struggled as a rookie quite often. He’s now playing fantastic, and basically our best defenseman. He’s also 24.
4 years older then Leo
3 years older then Zelly
3 years older then Minty
3 years older then Cutter
2 years older then McTavish
He’s even older then Zegras.
When did Troy Terry have his breakout? 24 years old.
Obviously everyone matures differently and you might expect more from the high draft picks like Leo at times. The best is absolutely yet to come. Let’s try and remember how young they are when evaluating where these guys are. They aren’t even close to their primes and things are in fact improving. In 3 years we are going to be a major problem.
Lacombe is having a stellar breakout. Remember how much he struggled as a rookie quite often. He’s now playing fantastic, and basically our best defenseman. He’s also 24.
4 years older then Leo
3 years older then Zelly
3 years older then Minty
3 years older then Cutter
2 years older then McTavish
He’s even older then Zegras.
When did Troy Terry have his breakout? 24 years old.
Obviously everyone matures differently and you might expect more from the high draft picks like Leo at times. The best is absolutely yet to come. Let’s try and remember how young they are when evaluating where these guys are. They aren’t even close to their primes and things are in fact improving. In 3 years we are going to be a major problem.
robbieboy3686
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The Midnight Burrito
True Fan
And especially when talking about trading some of these guys for 8M players. We don’t know what we have yet.
robbieboy3686
Registered User
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But we do know what we would have with the 8m players. On the flip side. Will be interesting to see if beeker makes a blockbuster deal. I’m praying Ottawa starts to lose every game so tkachuk can ask out
SmokeyDuck
Registered User
If we need a new podcast to listen to lets just make one. I have a recording studio.
Anaheim4ever
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- Jun 15, 2017
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Zegras should be having a break out when healthy. He turns 24 in march.
McTavish still has 2 years to turn it around. Minty and Cutter have 3 years. Carlsson has 4.
Anaheim4ever
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MMC
Global Moderator
I’m gonna say it. This team can make the playoffs
All Mighty
Registered User
Our competitive advantage right now is we have 2 above average goalies. No matter who is in the net, they give the team a chance to win. I wonder what the plan is for Gibson now.
MMC
Global Moderator
I’m more curious on if we try to lock up Dostal on a long term deal this offseason or just go shorter term, either would be telling about what they plan to do with Gibson
MMC
Global Moderator
If we want to try a young player in a 4th line role I'd prefer it be Caulfield to Nesterenko
Hockey Duckie
Registered User
The Youth D
LaCombe doesn't turn 24 until four more days, which is Jan 9th.
I thought LaCombe did an admirable job being thrusted in a top-pairing role as a rookie last year. Despite struggling a bit ( 2a and a -17 rating), we won more games with him as our top-pairing RD than anyone else on the roster. We went 8-5 in that span before being replaced by Luneau for a game. After that stint, LaCombe improved for the rest of the season. Did we see signs that LaCombe could take a big leap this season? Yup.
Our defensive guys from the CHL may take longer to develop since playing defense isn't as a high a priority as offense in the CHL. The NCAA guys do focus on playing defense and offense. Also, the NCAA guys are more advanced in physical development. Yeah, it helps they're older too.
LaCombe, NCAA = 2019 draft, Rd 2
Helleson, NCAA = 2019 draft, Rd 2
Zell, CHL = 2021 draft, Rd 2
Minty, CHL = 2022 draft, Rd 1 (#10 OA)
Luneau, CHL = 2022 draft, Rd 2
Helleson might be a good 3rd pairing, shutdown D who can chip in offensively from the point. Our AHL coaches have been misusing Helleson. Zell and Minty need to work heavily on their defense, but more so Minty b/c he is being groomed as a top pairing guy. Zell might be a 3rd pairing, OFD like Vat as Zell's scoring rate is the same from last year for this season. Minty is struggling this season now that he's no longer being sheltered. It may take him a year or two to change his game from puck watching to playing assignments, but the good thing is that LaCombe can shelter Minty.
I think Cronin broke Minty for this season.
I will be very concerned if we bring Solberg over b/c I don't trust our AHL and NHL development programs. We recently stopped the development program at the NHL level as we are rotating youth D in Minty, Zell, and Helleson... though I think Helleson might stay longer in the rotation than out of it. The youths are now relegated to 3rd pairing minutes than their accustomed 2nd pairing minutes or higher from last year and the start of this season. Cronin said the youth d-men have a difficult time understanding being in a rotation with limited minutes now.
Ducks youth Forwards
Z, NCAA = 2019 draft, Rd 1 (9th OA) ... 2 months younger than LaCombe
Mac, CHL = 2021 draft, Rd 1 (3rd OA)
Cutter, NCAA = 2022 draft, Rd 1 (5th OA)
Carlsson, SHL = 2023 draft, Rd 1 (3rd OA)
I think our forwards are getting stunted due to coaching. Age shouldn't be that big factor because Zegras set the standard.
Z broke open offensively in his official rookie season. He hit over 60 pts and 23 goals in his first two seasons, under Eakins. Under Cronin, Z's offense has been erased for the past two seasons.
Mac took a great step last year in his sophomore season under Cronin. This year, his play has gone down under Cronin.
Carlsson has the same pattern as Mac.
Cutter is leading the scoring out of our youths this season, his rookie season.
Is LaCombe an outlier?
It's possible that LaCombe is developing in spite of current coaching group. People forget that LaCombe converted from forward to defense in high school. He spent four year in the NCAA developing his defense first and then let his offense flourish afterwards. Also, LaCombe took on extra activities to overcome not being aggressive during the summer after Cronin came down on him too harshly last season. Those activities included doing boxing.
We can wait for some youths to develop, but it is also possible that our youths are being stunted in their development.
The team has gone to win mode by making the vets Dumo-Trouba a pair instead of separating them to be paired with the youths. This was supposed to be a development season, but things have changed for year 3 of the reset rebuild. It feels odd b/c we are winning due to great goal tending and scoring luck.
I'd rather move on from Cronin and bring on an offensive-minded head coach who is good a developing youths b/c I don't believe more time will help our youths breakout.
Hockey Duckie
Registered User
Oh I love Caulfield! He makes Gaucher look and player better in that mash 'em up role, but creative enough to help a scoring winger pot goals like Tracey, Pastujov, and, recently, Sidorov. Caulfield is a good glue guy who can grind.
We're calling up scoring forwards and asking them to grind as 4th liners in Colangelo and Nesterenko.
