2024–25 NHL team preview: Anaheim Ducks
LAST SEASON
In the NHL’s life cycle, Rebuilding teams lose season after season, maturing and slowly accumulating young talent until, one year, phase 1 suddenly ends and the team starts to compete. Armed with a new coach in Greg Cronin and some surprisingly splashy offseason signings in Alex Killorn and Radko Gudas, the Ducks looked ready to start improving in a wide-open Pacific Division last fall, even with Killorn sidelined to start the year after breaking a finger in a preseason game. Anaheim had some momentum in October and November, going 7-4 in its first 11 games after putting together a six-game winning streak.
Then, reality punched the Ducks in their bills. Injuries piled up for talented young forward Trevor Zegras, from inflammation in his public bones to, later, a broken ankle. Future star Leo Carlsson, the No. 2 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, was held out of the lineup on and off as the team tried to load-manage his playing time, and he wound up missing significant action with a knee sprain anyway. An eight-game losing streak to close out November put Anaheim in a hole from which it never climbed out. They were the NHL’s most penalized team by a huge margin and iced a pitiful 31st-ranked penalty kill, exposing themselves as a still-green team not ready to compete. They ended up trading Zegras’ great friend, Jamie Drysdale, to the Philadelphia Flyers in January, pouring kerosene on rumors that Zegras would be the next trade victim.
By season’s end, they’d improved by just one point on their franchise-worst 2022-23 campaign. The Ducks did end up with the No. 3 pick in the NHL Draft, however, and raised eyebrows with a big swing by picking high-upside forward Beckett Sennecke.
So it’s rinse and repeat for GM Pat Verbeek…sort of. One of these years, the oodles of young talent Anaheim has at every position will come together, and we’ll see this team explode. Could it finally happen in 2024-25?
KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES
Additions
Robby Fabbri, LW
Brian Dumoulin, D
Jansen Harkins, C
Carson Meyer, RW
Departures
Jakob Silfverberg, RW (SHL)
Max Jones, LW (Bos)
Gustav Lindstrom, D (UFA)
Robert Hagg, D (VGK)
Benoit-Olivier Groulx, C (NYR)
Ben Meyers, C (Sea)
Glenn Gawdin, C, (LA)
William Lagesson, D (Det)
OFFENSE
The Ducks couldn’t buy a goal last season, icing the NHL’s 30th-ranked offense and 25th-ranked power play. They sat alongside the pitiful San Jose Sharks and Chicago Blackhawks in every major advanced 5-on-5 offensive per-60 metric: shot attempts, shots, expected goals, scoring chances, high-danger chances. Nothing worked. Part of the problem was the fact Anaheim rarely competed with a full deck. Frank Vatrano, who carried the team with a career-best 37 goals, Troy Terry and Ryan Strome were the only go-to forwards to exceed 75 games. Carlsson, Mason McTavish, Zegras and Killorn all failed to play even 65 games.
Is there reason to expect offensive improvement this season? On one hand, the Ducks made no meaningful lineup augmentations aside from signing middle-sixer Robby Fabbri, who should be good for 15-20 goals if he stays healthy. On the other hand, on top of presumed better injury luck, we should see continued progression from within as McTavish and Carlsson mature into their long-term roles at the team’s top two centers. The Ducks should also see increased offensive assistance from their mobile young defensemen, the most promising of which are Olen Zellweger and Pavel Mintyukov. The player with arguably the greatest potential to move the needle is Cutter Gauthier, acquired for Drysdale. Gauthier was absolutely dominant in college before getting a taste of the NHL late last season.
The real wild card is Zegras, of course. Will the Ducks trade their fallen star? If they don’t, will they turn him into a full-time left winger? Zegras’ all-around play has disappointed, but he’s still just 23 and his hands remain elite. He can still help if he remains a Duck, as suggested by a strong finish to 2023-24 in which he put up eight points in his final eight games.
DEFENSE
The Ducks were one of the worst defensive teams in NHL history the season before last. While they were still awful last season, allowing the third most goals in the league at 3.57 and sitting 31st in penalty killing at 72.4 percent, they actually improved quite a bit. They allowed 0.52 fewer goals and 6.6 fewer shots per game. They sat 20th in 5-on-5 expected goals against per game. They played a tighter style under Cronin when they weren’t parading to the penalty box. A top four of Mintyukov, Gudas, Zellweger and Cam Fowler has potential to keep improving, and you could do worse than pairing the experienced Brian Dumoulin with Jackson LaCombe on the third unit.
The Ducks appear to have at least stopped the bleeding in their own end, and many of their top young forwards project to become impactful 200-foot players, especially Carlsson, whose play resembles Anze Kopitar’s.
GOALTENDING
John Gibson had a .921 save percentage across his first six NHL seasons. He looked like a future Hall of Famer. But as the Ducks imploded, so did he, and the shell-shocked incarnation of Gibson has never recovered, posting a .900 mark over the past five years. He’s been dogged by trade rumors summer after summer, but no team has stepped up to take on his contract, which somehow still has three years remaining at a $6.4 million cap hit. Gibson nevertheless led the Ducks in starts last season with 44, but his share of the workload continues to shrink as Anaheim transitions toward Lukas Dostal as their new No. 1. Dostal’s overall numbers (14-23-3, .902) were better than Gibson’s (13-27-2. .888) last year, but they weren’t that far apart in reality. Among 54 goalies who played at least 25 games, Gibson actually ranked higher in 5-on-5 goals saved above expected per 60, sitting 29th at -0.6, whereas Dostal was 50th at -8.8.
So how were Dostal’s surface stats better, then? Because the Ducks played differently in front of the rookie. Gibson has a 2.76 expected goals against per 60 at 5-on-5 in his appearances compared to 2.46 for Dostal. So while Dostal, 24, hasn’t proven yet he’s the superior tender, the team seems to respond better when he’s between the pipes, and it’s time for the Ducks to truly see what they have in him. Expect Dostal to start more games than Gibson this season.
COACHING
Cronin may not have felt like a household name going into last season, but he was extremely experienced at the pro level, with years of assistant and associate coach duty with the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Islanders, plus half a decade as an AHL head coach. He was expected to instill the young team with more structure and defensive awareness and did that. His predecessor Dallas Eakins was known to foster a looser dressing room atmosphere, whereas Cronin brought more hard-nosed accountability. He was toughest on Zegras, benching him for the third period and overtime during an October game, and vowed after the season to hold the rest of his troops to a higher standard. Cronin isn’t considered the easiest coach to play for but seems to be the right fit at this juncture of Anaheim’s rebuild.
ROOKIES
Mintyukov, Zellweger, Carlsson and Dostal all played enough games to clear their Calder eligibility. Gauthier only played one game and enters this season as one of the clear league-wide favorites for rookie of the year, in the top tier along with the likes of Macklin Celebrini and Matvei Michkov. Gauthier does a bit of everything; he possesses power forward size and strength, veteran-grade swagger and sufficient sniper chops that he led the NCAA in goals last season. Gauthier scored more goals last season than any college player in 18 years.
Defenseman Tristan Luneau saw seven games of NHL action and brings some nice offensive potential, especially as a right-handed shot, which the Ducks need. They’re high on him, but he has to beat out LaCombe for a job, so it’s possible Luneau opens the year in the AHL. Physical center Nathan Gaucher debuted in the AHL last year and has a rugged game that could allow him to crack the NHL lineup relatively soon because he’s well suited to a checking-line assignment.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. Does Trevor Zegras finish this season as a Duck? With Gauthier and, eventually, Sennecke joining the foundational core alongside Carlsson and McTavish, Zegras may be expendable. He is reportedly open to a move and a fresh start, but the Ducks aren’t simply going to give away a player so talented that he was hailed as a future Art Ross Trophy challenger while coming up as a prospect. It wouldn’t make sense for Verbeek to sell low after Zegras’ injury-shortened season. So it may take months – at minimum – to reach a resolution here.
2. Who steps up to become Anaheim’s alpha center? It’s pretty clear at this point that Anaheim no longer envisions Zegras as their No. 1 pivot. Does the tenacious McTavish earn the role permanently this season? Or does Carlsson seize it and never look back? The money here is on Carlsson, who has the higher ceiling, as indicated by the fact he stuck in the NHL at 18, whereas McTavish played his nine games in his draft year before returning to junior.
3. Who takes the mantle as the long-term No. 1 defenseman: Pavel Mintyukov or Olen Zellweger? Both players have sky-high potential. Zellweger probably will max out as a superior scorer, but Mintyukov was a potent weapon in his junior days, too, and possesses the greater all-around game. It feels like he is the future. Don’t be surprised if Mintyukov levels up and leads all Ducks players in average time on ice this season.
PREDICTION
The Ducks own the NHL’s fourth-longest active playoff drought at six seasons and counting. It would require, give or take, a 35-point improvement to make it this year. Given how little their on-ice results changed in the previous two seasons, it’s difficult to envision Anaheim playing in the 2024-25 postseason. But the Ducks improved their all-around play under the hood last year and should score more as their young players find their confidence. Even if they don’t make the playoffs, it won’t be surprising if the Ducks rank among the league’s most improved teams. Maybe they jump from 59 points to 80 and finish fifth or sixth in the Pacific Division this time around.
Advanced stats courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Money Puck
_____
POST SPONSORED BY bet365
_____