GDT: #72 ⋅ NYR @ ANA ⋅ 7:00 PM PDT

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Agreed. But I am concerned we are running out of time/space to give them all a fair shot at utilizing their strengths. Not to mention having a coach who's strength is not offense or utilizing players based on their strengths.

Minty is supposed to have offensive upside but had virtually no real opportunity to show it this year. How does Luneau get that chance as well? Zell didn't have a great year but how much of that is his fault? Do you give up on him and move him? And just how many D men do you need/want who are strong offensively vs strong defensively? Where does Hellison fit in? Do you move him to keep a guy with more offense? And certainly right now Solberg is seen as part of the core D here.

I don't know the answer to all those questions but it worries me as to the people we have who will make those decisions and possibly make a bad deal or two. I guess time will tell.

Minty and Zell are both 21, Lacombe had his big breakout this year at 24. I think there is time, now whether there’s space might be a different discussion but there’s no reason all 3 can’t be on the left side to give them a chance for the next few years.
 
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Agreed. But I am concerned we are running out of time/space to give them all a fair shot at utilizing their strengths. Not to mention having a coach who's strength is not offense or utilizing players based on their strengths.

Minty is supposed to have offensive upside but had virtually no real opportunity to show it this year. How does Luneau get that chance as well? Zell didn't have a great year but how much of that is his fault? Do you give up on him and move him? And just how many D men do you need/want who are strong offensively vs strong defensively? Where does Hellison fit in? Do you move him to keep a guy with more offense? And certainly right now Solberg is seen as part of the core D here.

I don't know the answer to all those questions but it worries me as to the people we have who will make those decisions and possibly make a bad deal or two. I guess time will tell.

I don’t think we are running out of time. But we are running out of space on the left side with Solberg in the wings.

Right or wrong we will lose either Zellweger or Mintyukov at some point. I don’t see LaCombe going back to the right side at this point.

I think it will be Zellweger. But if packaged correctly with the right pick, we should be able to fill a need at forward.

Luneau and Helleson are going no where. Gudas will be gone at the TDL and Trouba will be re-signed, hopefully on a team favorable contract, to keep his wife in SoCal medicine.

John
 
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Minty and Zell are both 21, Lacombe had his big breakout this year at 24. I think there is time, now whether there’s space might be a different discussion but there’s no reason all 3 can’t be on the left side to give them a chance for the next few years.
I was viewing "time" from the perspective that they all need to play and have an opportunity to show themselves in their best light. But we are starting to have a logjam certainly by next year when presumably Luneau is given a shot here. They all need to play regular and to their strengths, but how do we do that without misusing another player? Where are they all going to play next year? It all kind of has to happen "now" for evaluation purposes.
 
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I don’t think we are running out of time. But we are running out of space on the left side with Solberg in the wings.

Right or wrong we will lose either Zellweger or Mintyukov at some point. I don’t see LaCombe going back to the right side at this point.

I think it will be Zellweger. But if packaged correctly with the right pick, we should be able to fill a need at forward.

Luneau and Helleson are going no where. Gudas will be gone at the TDL and Trouba will be re-signed, hopefully on a team favorable contract, to keep his wife in SoCal medicine.

John
I tried to define "time" in my post above. I agree that time in the sense of them getting "old" is not an issue. It's more that we have a bunch of good young D and not enough ice time to give them all a fair shot at their strengths without potentially hindering someone else's development opportunity at the same time.

If I had to guess I would agree that one of Minty or Zell will go because they potentially have the ability to return the most. But I'd sure hate to trade one and then watch them develop like LaCombe somewhere else.

It's a good problem to have but I still worry as to how it will be handled.

From the time he got here I've insisted the team not extend Trouba this summer but wait until after next year to decide if they should. I'm not sure whether we should be bringing him back or not, but we should be in a much better position to decide that after another season of his play as well as the younger guys' play. There's no reason at all to sign him now. (I know that's not what you are advocating, but others are.)
 
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Was watching the highlights again and the OT goal was obviously the most hype moment and a great play from all three Ducks involved, but man was the game tying goal such a beautiful play too. Smart chip out along the boards by Killorn to start the play, great solo rush by Leo, great awareness by Mintyukov to spread the 3 on 2 out and then the vision and patience to find an activating Zellweger who roofed it over Shesterkin's shoulder. Just an outstanding odd man rush goal.
Mintyukov had a decent shot opportunity, but recognized that Zell had a better one. Probably the only time this year you’ll see them on the ice together.
 
Was watching the highlights again and the OT goal was obviously the most hype moment and a great play from all three Ducks involved, but man was the game tying goal such a beautiful play too. Smart chip out along the boards by Killorn to start the play, great solo rush by Leo, great awareness by Mintyukov to spread the 3 on 2 out and then the vision and patience to find an activating Zellweger who roofed it over Shesterkin's shoulder. Just an outstanding odd man rush goal.
The cool part about that goal is it was 1 forward and 3 defensemen on the rush. Gudas is strangely very smart about rushing the net and creating a distraction.
 
I don't know if this was mentioned earlier in the thread but I wanted to say that when they scored that OT goal the thing that really caught my attention was how the whole team streamed on to the ice to celebrate like they just won the cup. That was very impressive.

I'd like to think that maybe they are really bonding well as a team and creating the kind of team chemistry that everybody in sports talks about but that nobody can ever truly define.
 
Something happened in November or December that flipped the switch. LaCombe didn't look comfortable at all for those first few games. Before then I would have been a fan of doing that for Laine.

Now? Jackson's been sustaining this for so long that he's firmly in the "next core" conversation.

A lot of people miss out on context.


2023-24 LaCombe's Rookie Season

LaCombe progressed well in his rookie season. Notice his scoring rate improved and his +/- reduced as the season went along after his 14 games playing RD1 from the start of the game. His highest scoring rate was 0.36 to end the season splits. This already proved that LaCombe's offense already started budding in his rookie year as opposed to coming out of nowhere.

The unexpected part was being pushed to play RD1 with Fowler. Many posters were glad to sacrifice LaCombe in order to preserve the development of Minty and Zell. The problem was the majority was so loud that they dismissed LaCombe progression that he outperformed Minty and Zell to close out the season. LaCombe finished with a +1 in the final 22 to 23 games while Minty and Zell finished with negative ratings. Also lost in the whole mix is that LaCombe started 56% of his EV shifts in the Dzone, while Minty and Zell had more favorable starts. That should make LaCombe's +1 rating more impressive.

LaCombe finished the season with a shot blocking rate of 1.82 blocks per game and a hit rate of 0.70 hits per game.

The way LaCombe improved throughout the season, especially set in a defensive role, should have made him part of the future core. Yet the loud majority loved to identify one LaCombe mistake and make it like he did it all the time. When Zell or Minty would do mistakes, it would be crickets from the loud majority that loved to hate on LaCombe. Essentially, the loud majority brainwashed the board into believing LaCombe was weak asset.

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2023-24 Minty's Rookie season

Posters did not realize that Minty struggled when he was put into a top-4 after his first 20 games. The top-4 experiment ended after 20 games and Minty was relegated to the 3rd pairing again to regain confidence. It worked. Through injuries, Minty was promoted to the top pairing role with Gudas and Minty's game suffered. Afterwards, Minty was pushed down to the 2nd pair for seven games with LaCombe. With LaCombe, Minty's offense sprang back to life and wasn't exposed defensively. It was Minty's best performance game set of the season in a top-4 role! Finally, the org tried benched LaCombe in order to rotated Lindstrom into play with Minty in a top-4 role and it ended terrible for Minty as he incurred an injury in that game that ruled him out for the season.

In Minty's splits, we see it is LaCombe, playing RD, who improved Minty's game as a top-4 d-man. This could be called foreshadowing, but, again, many of the loud majority just omitted it from history.

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2024-25 LaCombe's Sophomore Season

LaCombe looked great in pre-season until he got sick. Gudas and the team were raving about LaCombe in training camp. The first game of the season, LaCombe was taken off the roster due to an illness. That illness took him out for over a week and missed like four games. It took seven games for LaCombe to get back into hockey shape, game speed, and game feel. That was his training camp all over again. Once he got over the illness, the team eased him back into the lineup. (See ATOI in the chart below.)

From last year's splits, we see LaCombe constantly improving his scoring rate from 0.14 to 0.20 to 0.30 and, finally, to 0.36 ppg throughout the season. Going from 0.36 to 0.50 ppg rate looks like a normal progression for LaCombe. It's going from 0.50 to 0.75 that has become impressive.

The other impressive stat is that LaCombe is hitting above 1 hit per game this season. Last year, his hit rate was at 0.70. Big kudos to playing with Gudas this season to give him more confidence to play that way and allowed LaCombe to be free to rush offensively.

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Now, here's the kicker, LaCombe tapped into his offense in his sophomore season, after playing at the WJC-20 and winning gold. LaCombe produced nearly at a ppg rate in the last year of his college career. It is proof that he can sustain scoring at a high rate throughout the whole season and through three contiguous college seasons. Also, his commitment to defense started in his first season in college with a -1 rating and finished 2nd in blocked shots for the team as a rookie coming from a high school level of play, not the USNTDP.

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What makes LaCombe great at the NHL level is his skating, one of the reasons the Ducks nabbed the high schooler early in the draft. His college head coach summed it up best when LaCombe chose to go to Minny.

Minnesota coach Bob Motzko gave this scouting report on LaCombe, the 39th overall pick, to the Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald newspaper a few days before the draft:
“The first thing is he’s just got tremendous skating ability and that’s been one of the real common denominators over the years. Whether you’re a young player coming in or you’ve got a little experience, the players that really have that extra special gear, the game comes quicker to them.”
 
I tried to define "time" in my post above. I agree that time in the sense of them getting "old" is not an issue. It's more that we have a bunch of good young D and not enough ice time to give them all a fair shot at their strengths without potentially hindering someone else's development opportunity at the same time.

If I had to guess I would agree that one of Minty or Zell will go because they potentially have the ability to return the most. But I'd sure hate to trade one and then watch them develop like LaCombe somewhere else.

It's a good problem to have but I still worry as to how it will be handled.

From the time he got here I've insisted the team not extend Trouba this summer but wait until after next year to decide if they should. I'm not sure whether we should be bringing him back or not, but we should be in a much better position to decide that after another season of his play as well as the younger guys' play. There's no reason at all to sign him now. (I know that's not what you are advocating, but others are.)
The last time we traded a young D man, we got Cutter. You can be worried, but what has Verbeek shown you that gives you pause ? He has traded 1 young player and got a great young player back (I know I know cutter wanted out) but you don’t think he knows value ? He has gotten a better pick for every pick he used to trade for players. He’s not perfect, but you seem to be worried because you don’t like him, when I think he’s doing a great job.

You hate Cronin, and use that as really your only reason to hate Verbeek too. In my opinion.
 
The last time we traded a young D man, we got Cutter. You can be worried, but what has Verbeek shown you that gives you pause ? He has traded 1 young player and got a great young player back (I know I know cutter wanted out) but you don’t think he knows value ? He has gotten a better pick for every pick he used to trade for players. He’s not perfect, but you seem to be worried because you don’t like him, when I think he’s doing a great job.

You hate Cronin, and use that as really your only reason to hate Verbeek too. In my opinion.
First and foremost I made it pretty clear I was concerned that it would be difficult to give all these guys enough runway to prove who to keep and who to trade. The fact that Verbeek is far from proven as some GM genius at this point in his career does add to my concern.

The Cutter trade is totally irrelevant in evaluating Verbeek due to the fact of Cutter wanting out, Philly want a young RHD, and BM who drafted Drysdale being on the Philly payroll at the time the deal went down. The stars aligned perfectly for that deal to happen. It wasn't some genius move by Verbeek.

Your desire to play amateur psychiatrist causes you to jump to a lot of conclusion...IMO.
 
First and foremost I made it pretty clear I was concerned that it would be difficult to give all these guys enough runway to prove who to keep and who to trade. The fact that Verbeek is far from proven as some GM genius at this point in his career does add to my concern.

The Cutter trade is totally irrelevant in evaluating Verbeek due to the fact of Cutter wanting out, Philly want a young RHD, and BM who drafted Drysdale being on the Philly payroll at the time the deal went down. The stars aligned perfectly for that deal to happen. It wasn't some genius move by Verbeek.

Your desire to play amateur psychiatrist causes you to jump to a lot of conclusion...IMO.
I mean it’s a fairly easy conclusion, you don’t like Cronin, and it may cloud your judgment on Verbeek. And I mentioned that trade fell into our lap. Please tell me the young duck player Verbeek has traded and lost that trade ? It hasn’t happened, you assume the worst because you don’t like him, and there is nothing fact based (in terms of trades) to show he’s incompetent.
 
First and foremost I made it pretty clear I was concerned that it would be difficult to give all these guys enough runway to prove who to keep and who to trade. The fact that Verbeek is far from proven as some GM genius at this point in his career does add to my concern.

The Cutter trade is totally irrelevant in evaluating Verbeek due to the fact of Cutter wanting out, Philly want a young RHD, and BM who drafted Drysdale being on the Philly payroll at the time the deal went down. The stars aligned perfectly for that deal to happen. It wasn't some genius move by Verbeek.

Your desire to play amateur psychiatrist causes you to jump to a lot of conclusion...IMO.
I'm not sure you can say the Gauthier trade is totally irrelevant in evaluating Verbeek. Sure, Gauthier wanted out.....a deal still had to get done and none of the other teams in the NHL managed to get one done. I'd say it was some pretty good GM work to trade from a position of strength and acquire a top prospect in a position of need.
 
I'm not sure you can say the Gauthier trade is totally irrelevant in evaluating Verbeek. Sure, Gauthier wanted out.....a deal still had to get done and none of the other teams in the NHL managed to get one done. I'd say it was some pretty good GM work to trade from a position of strength and acquire a top prospect in a position of need.
Well, it was said Philly was specifically looking for a young RD. Not sure too many teams had that to offer. We had to be at the very top of any list of suitors.
 
Well, it was said Philly was specifically looking for a young RD. Not sure too many teams had that to offer. We had to be at the very top of any list of suitors.
I'm sure plenty of teams had young RHD, whether they were willing to take the risk (or had the organisational depth) to do so is another question. But like I said, still had to get the deal done, but also the fact that I would imagine you would need to convince Gauthier that Anaheim is the best place for him.

And really part of the reason we were able to make the trade is because Verbeek further beefed up our the organisational depth on the backend through the draft with some high picks (Mintyukov, Warren, Luneau).

I'm not saying Verbeek is perfect, but I don't see how the Gauthier trade can be regarded as anything other then a big plus for him.
 
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