The Pros and Cons of Pre-Season

Now that pre-season is officially over for the Ducks, it is time to look at how the Ducks performed overall. Heres a list of the pros and cons of the Ducks this pre-season.

Pros:

-Jonas Hiler looks like he’s back to normal.

The biggest concern this off-season was if Hiller truly was symptom free or not. His first game back was against Vancouver, where he stopped all 21 shots he faced and looked like he was back. Hiller’s biggest performance was their second game against Vancouver, when he backstopped the Ducks during a 6 0n 3 Vancouver rush.

-The Ducks have depth!

Most of the moves this off-season were to add depth to the Ducks offense. We saw some solid play from their biggest signing, Andrew Cogliano. There was also a ton of help from several prospects like Holland, Pamieri and Gordon. This will be key to their success.

-Help from the blue-line

The Ducks made some good trades and signings by adding Rodney, Smaby and Foster to their lineup. Veterans Visnovsky, Foster, Beauchemin and Lydman will help show the rookies (Fowler and Smaby) the ropes. I saw a ton of offensive power from the blue-line this pre-season. The defense as a whole had 4 goals and 10 assists in 6 games which are good numbers if you ask me.

Cons:

– Top lines need to step it up

Last season, nearly all of our offensive production was from the first and second lines. This was not the case for the pre-season. Most of the goals came from prospects and third liners. Carlyle had a chat with the RPG line before their game against Jokerit, and it seemed to work. Perry scored two goals and an assists, Getzlaf had one goal and an assists and Ryan also had an assist.

I don’t expect this to be a major problem when regular season comes around, but it was just something I noticed during pre-season.

-Collapsing

How many times have we seen the Ducks up 3-1 with 10 minutes left in the third, then all of a sudden the game is tied and we are headed to overtime? This is nothing new for the Ducks, but it needs to stop nonetheless. They need to figure out a way to hold on to their leads and let us fans blood pressure stay low for once.

Overall I think the Ducks are in good shape, but we’ll know for sure once October 7th comes around!

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