Ducks are lined up for another Cup run
The reigning champion Chicago Blackhawks have been forced to chop payroll costs so aggressively you get the feeling half the team will play next week’s home opener against the Rangers with large “For Sale” signs across their nameplates.
The Los Angeles Kings, meanwhile, have had to endure a truly ugly post-season, one in which two veteran players were caught in drug-related snares while a third was convicted of domestic assault and decided to pack up and return to Russia rather than be deported.
So if you’re the Anaheim Ducks watching all of this from afar, knowing that you’ve fallen to those two teams in the last two post-seasons and then watched them go on to win the Stanley Cup, it would be hard not to get the feeling the path to a championship is being cleared.
Not to celebrate the struggles of others, but. . . .
It’s possible the Ducks were hockey’s second-best team each of those past two seasons, but have nothing to show for it. With a team that was already deep and talented with a nice mix of youth and veteran talent, GM Bob Murray went out with a to-do list over the summer and was able to put a check mark beside every item:
Needed a little experience and nastiness on the back end, traded for Kevin Bieksa. Check. Needed to get a little faster up front, traded for speedy winger Carl Hagelin. Check. Needed some veteran stability between the pipes, acquired veteran goaltender Anton Khudobin. Check. Wanted to shake up the coaching staff a little, reached out and hired former Ottawa head coach Paul Maclean. Check. Wanted another set of experienced eyes in his front office, hired former Maple Leafs general manager Dave Nonis. Check. Needed even more depth for a long playoff run, signed Shawn Horcoff, Chris Stewart and Mike Santorelli. Check. Check. And check. Among all NHL clubs, the Ducks may have led the way in doing what they needed to do over the offseason to enhance their chances of winning it all this season, or at the very least, making it out of the Western Conference.
For now, at least, that puts them at the top of the list of Cup contenders in a league that is so tightly packed that 96 points wasn’t enough to grab a playoff berth a year ago. The Kings, defending champions a year ago at this time, missed the playoffs, as did Boston, the 2014 Presidents’ Trophy winners.
Picking a Cup champion at this point is, of course, a bit of a mug’s game, since none of us know what players might be moved to which teams by March, or which team might be savaged by injuries. As a comparison, if somebody had told you in April that the Blue Jays would add Troy Tulowitzki, David Price and Ben Revere during the season, and that Marcus Stroman wasn’t actually going to miss the entire campaign with a knee injury, you might have picked them to win their division, too.
So we do this with the information we have at the moment, and we do so knowing the West has captured the last five Cups and seven of the last nine, and still has more quality top to bottom than the Eastern Conference.
The Ducks, you’ll recall, won it all in 2007 with Brian Burke in the front office and Randy Carlyle behind the bench, which kind of feels like ancient hockey history, particularly when you also note the team’s two superb blueliners, Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer, are both long retired.
What the Ducks have done under Murray is be more than competitive most years while carefully putting together a surprisingly deep cupboard of young talent and prospects. Sami Vatanen, Cam Fowler and Hampus Lindholm could be a Big Three in their own right one day if the Ducks can keep them all together, and none of the three is older than 24. Shea Theodore, 20, may one day make that a very talented quartet, and we haven’t even talked about 23-year-old Josh Manson and 24-year-old Simon Depres yet.
Up front, winger Nick Ritchie, 10th overall in the 2014 draft, might yet crack the lineup for this season and 22-year-old centre Rickard Rakell may be poised to break out.
In Frederik Andersen and newly-signed John Gibson, finally, the Ducks have a nice, young goalie tandem, although Gibson will be getting most of his work this season in the minors, with Khudobin back- ing up Andersen.
So when it comes to the Ducks, what’s not to like? Well, there is the power play, which was, bizarrely, third-worst in the league last season despite the presence of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry.
There’s also the unknown: Could Steven Stamkos be moved to a contender? What about Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien in Winnipeg? Will the Kings get Anze Kopitar signed? Can Artemi Panarin make an impact in Chicago? When will Pavel Datsyuk play? Will Phil Kessel bloom in Pittsburgh?
All those answers will come in time. For now, with what we know, nobody looks better than the Ducks.