Looking Ahead

With the Ducks firmly at the bottom of the Conference and almost the bottom of the league, they can look forward to a relatively lengthy home stand that will see them play the next seven games at Honda Center. These games will be even more significant as the Ducks will play 10 of 15 December games on the road. If the last trip is any indication, the Ducks do not want to spend any more time on the road.

But there are a few things the Ducks can look forward to. Saku Koivu skated briefly with the team today and Ryan Carter is still healing from his foot injury. In addition, Evgeny Artyukhin played a heck of a game Monday night and was promoted to the second line for line rushes in practice. Furthermore, Corey Perry is on a 12 game point streak, and Ryan Getzlaf just had his streak snapped at 11 games. That means the big line is scoring, and scoring often.

If you want to stretch to find some more good news, you can look at the Chicago Blackhawks. TSN is reporting that the Blackhawks are close to contract extentions with Duncan Keith, Jonathan Toews, and Patrick Kane. How is this good news for the Ducks? Well you see, there’s no way for Chicago to fit those three under the salary cap with the other players they have. That means they’ll be looking to trade current players, and they have a boatload of defensive and forward prospects that the Ducks might be able to take advantage of.

The time for the Ducks to make a move is about right. They have a lot of talent with their NHL team and have quite a few good prospects in the minors. The Ducks should be able to work some trades that allow them to trade those prospects for help with the big club, and a team like Chicago would be a perfect example of a trading partner.

But don’t look for any deal to happen until later this year. The Ducks are panicking, but not to the point of trades just yet.