Three Major Needs the Anaheim Ducks Must Address to be Playoff Contenders
The Anaheim Ducks believe they have what it takes to be playoff contenders. However, there are three major areas the team needs to work on.
Entering into the new season, it’s hard to get a read on the Anaheim Ducks team and what they might be able to achieve. They haven’t noticeably altered their team from last season’s underwhelming result.
Yet, even so, the Ducks have vocally stated that they want to be, and believe they can be, a playoff team contending for a cup. With that in mind, the following are some of the variables the Ducks may need to manipulate in order to climb from the league’s basement up to the lofty heights of being playoff contenders.
3. Primary Scoring
Last season, the Anaheim Ducks ranked 29th of the 31 NHL franchises for goals scored per game. This despite many of the veteran players hitting near enough to the career marks or better. As an example, the Ducks’ top-scoring player, Adam Henrique, was the 111th highest scoring player in the league last season with his 43 points (26G, 17A).
It was the third-highest scoring year in his career and the highest in five seasons. Despite many of our best wishes, it seems unlikely that Henrique will significantly pad those totals to creep into the top 50 scorers in the league, and command that primary scoring role. Indeed, the total needed to reach the top 50 scorers would, in fact, be a career year for Henrique.
There would be a lot of hope that Ryan Getzlaf can reach this lofty height again, as the ability to assist on goals seems to have greater survivorship than goal-scoring itself. Getzlaf has never been a strong skater, thus a deterioration in that area isn’t likely to drive him further from relevance. There are some questions, however, whether Getzlaf is the player he once was. Last season’s scoring pace was the lowest of his entire career and by a significant margin.
However, even excluding last season as an outlier, drawing a trendline through Getzlafs scoring history presents a negative trend that may be difficult to arrest as time goes on. That isn’t to say that Getzlaf’s goose is cooked, but more that his heady days of being a league elite players are closer to the end than the beginning.
There is also a case to be made that Getzlaf’s dwindling scoring is reflected in the lack of genuine goal scorers that surround him. As Corey Perry‘s goal scoring output declined, so to did Getzlaf’s assist rates. Perry, of course, is long gone yet no current Ducks player has stepped up to fill the void. Rickard Rakell is but a few years removed from his last 30-goal season, however, it could be stated that those seasons fell smack bang in the statistical goal scoring peak years which are now in his rear vision mirror.
It can also be said that Rakell’s most recent two seasons mirror the two seasons prior to those big 30-goal years and that this may be his true normal. At 27-years-of-age there can and should still remain hope that Rakell can recapture that goal-scoring flair, though he’ll need help to do so. Perhaps moving him back on a line with Getzlaf will initiate the spark required to propel both those players back towards the scoring elites.
Outside of those few names, there is not a lot of help coming from within last season’s team. Jakob Silfverberg scored at near enough his career rates, as did newcomer Sonny Milano. Danton Heinen remains somewhat of an enigma given his scoring has trended downwards since his NHL debut season. Yet, truth be told, his calling card is his defensive play.
Troy Terry made fantastic strides with his defensive game to the point he may have been the Ducks’ strongest defensive forward, yet his offense underwhelmed and he rarely looked threatening. Ditto for Max Jones. The Anaheim Ducks’ hope would be that these players can all be capable secondary scorers moving forward.
However, secondary scoring no longer drives teams in the NHL. Despite it being a team game, much like the NBA, the NHL is becoming more and more a star-driven league. Big-time stars are most often big-time scorers, and big-time scorers help teams win games. The long and short of it is that NHL hockey is a strong link game, that requires teams to have the best players on the ice more often than not. In some instances, this can mean depth and in others, it can mean star power that is always on the ice. The best teams have both.
Thus, it falls to the Ducks to discover a player who is capable of becoming the primary scoring focus on the team. Prospects like Trevor Zegras, a player who is almost single-handedly keeping the Ducks prospect pool afloat, may come into the team this coming season. He certainly has the talent to facilitate the offense as a gifted passer of the puck, yet is not much of a scorer in his own right, despite owning a fairly decent shot. If that sounds like Ryan Getzlaf a little, it is a good case to be made. Nonetheless, another great facilitator on the team would be a boon, but not necessarily a remedy for an anemic offense that is light on for goal scorers.
In essence, the Anaheim Ducks need to find an additional 35 goals to reach the middle of the table for total goal-scoring, given the gap between last season’s 182 goal effort and the 15th placed (for goal scoring) Carolina Hurricanes 217 goals. It’s an amount that can be reached by the committee or by acquiring that one very good scorer. Most likely, it will require both of those things.
The question is whether the Ducks can source the increased scoring output within the team, or whether they will be required to outsource and acquire that player in a trade. With the team already sitting above the salary cap, some fine manipulation of the cap will be required if a trade is the answer. It will possibly be the toughest deficit the team will be required to remedy given the short time span.
The lack of goal scoring becomes a little more dire when the proposed Pacific Division is taken into account, as the teams to be included averaged ~201 goals between them. Certainly three of the other seven proposed teams scored fewer goals than the Ducks, which leaves only two of the remaining four teams for the Ducks to leapfrog into the post-season (not inclusive of a wild card spot).
Can they outscore the Colorado Avalanche, Las Vegas Knights, or Minnesota Wild? It’s also worth mentioning that the defensively sound, and Stanley Cup Finalist, Dallas Stars were one of the lower-scoring teams.
The Stars, of course, provide hope and fear in equal measure. On one hand, they’re proof that goal scoring isn’t essential to making it into the postseason. On the other hand, they’re also proof that the teams who score less than the Ducks are stronger defensively. This leads to the next concern the Ducks will have to remedy.
2. Lock Down Defense
The Dallas Stars showed the way, smothering the opposing team’s offensive forays to the tune of the second-best goals-against mark in the NHL last season. In some ways, it wasn’t too dissimilar from the Ducks’ manner of play in the final years of Bruce Boudreau, when scoring was a challenge thus tight defensive play was considered the path forward.
Fast forward to the Dallas Eakins era and the former strong defensive play of the Anaheim Ducks wilted to fall into the bottom 10 teams in the league. Former strong defensive players such as Josh Manson and Hampus Lindholm visibly struggled with the lack of defensive structure.
In many ways, it seemed that the Ducks were requiring the defense to score more freely at the expense of defensive play, and have the forwards focus more on the defensive play than the offense. Under certain circumstances, that scenario could pay some dividends, yet for the 2019-2020 Anaheim Ducks, it helped them to nothing but hardship.
Thus, with a somewhat fragile offensive group, the Ducks will need to tighten up on the defensive end and attempt to reduce their goals against to under three goals per game. On paper, the Anaheim Ducks will have the defensive unit to make it happen. Cam Fowler, Kevin Shattenkirk, Hampus Lindholm, Josh Manson, and Christian Djoos is an extremely good top-5 group of defencemen.
Drawing back to the strong link play commentary given in the forward group section, it seems likely that the Ducks can have a strong defenceman on the ice at every moment of the game. There is simply no excuse for them not to have a strong defensive presence. Even the 6th and 7th defencemen, likely to be one of Jacob Larsson, Josh Mahura, or Brendan Guhle, should have little issue fitting in with less responsibility than they were required to shoulder last season.
There is a case to be made that Shattenkirk is not the strongest defensive player in the world and that the player he is essentially replacing in Erik Gudbranson had a much stronger than expected season last year. There is also a case to be made that Shattenkirks “bounceback” year came while on the best team in the league. All of which may be true, however, the newcomer does provide a surety in the defense that was missing and lacking for the Ducks last year.
With the current group, there should be scope to drive the offense with a Fowler-Shattenkirk pairing when the scoring is tough to come by. This also comes with a Lindholm-Manson defensive tandem that can lock offensive teams away. Perhaps the more beneficial set up would be to mix these pairings, given each a nice skating offensive presence and a more steady defensive stalwart. A Fowler-Manson and Lindholm-Shattenkirk for example. This, of course, is a puzzle for the Anaheim Ducks coaching staff to figure out.
Yet, for the Ducks to climb back into playoff contention, they will need to give their all-world netminder, John Gibson, every chance of playing his trade to the best of his abilities. Last season, Dallas provided the blueprint, yet for the players on this very Ducks team who have played through a similar cycle of defensive strength, they may already know the way.
1. Team Strategy and Innovations
The Anaheim Ducks went out on a limb and moved their AHL coach, who had shown very little tangible ability to develop players, into the NHL as their head coach. They touted reasons such as him knowing the names of the prospects and their tendencies, through to him being an innovator and practitioner of modern hockey tactics.
The reality of the situation was very different than expected. The youth movement, nearly to a player, suffered under Eakins guidance, while the veteran group all matched or exceed expectations. New school tactics ended up being an offense that dumped the puck in more than they carried it in, despite the team holding some of the better transition players in the league.
Hat tips to Troy Terry, Cam Fowler, and the late arrived Sonny Milano, for this aspect of play. Even with the man advantage did the Ducks dump the puck more than carry it. Hard to imagine that “new school tactics” meant taking “pucks in deep” to a level that not even old-school former-coach Randy Carlyle could envisage.
The Anaheim Ducks have backed in their current coaching staff for the coming season, yet one has to wonder what they will do differently from last season to ensure that there is a seamless transition from defense to offense or that positioning with be closer to flawless than the clear confusion that was apparent last season. Eakins publically spoke out against running drills for his players last season, yet drills are one of the tools that a coach has to ensure that structure is stable and that players know what’s happening at any given moment.
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Certainly, hockey is a game of organized chaos, but it behooves a player to know that if he gets the puck in any given position, that his teammates will be moving to a certain space on the ice. It simplifies the thought process and speeds up the play on the ice. It’s unusual for a coach to actively advocate against this kind of set up, particularly when said coach does not have a history of success to fall back on.
Thus, the question should be asked about the length of rope Eakins has to strangle his career with. Given the Anaheim Ducks have actively stated that they’re no longer considering themselves rebuilding and are destined for a playoff berth, can they afford to have a slow start with a coach who doesn’t have a history of success leading them? This may be further exacerbated by the number of former NHL head coaches on the market and without a job.
Gerard Gallard, Bruce Boudreau, Todd Nelson, John Stevens, Mike Babcock, Mike Yeo, or Dan Bylsma are all experienced head coach options with varying levels of success. Each has a stronger NHL resume than Eakins. Should the Ducks chose to truly go with a new coach, Rikard Gronberg or Karl Taylor (reigning AHL coach of the year) could be strong contenders given their strong resumes outside of the NHL coaching bubble.
The Anaheim Ducks could even see themselves to be on the forefront of innovation by hiring one of the many strong female coaches who may make themselves available for hire. Recently the Arizona Coyotes hired the first full-time female NHL coach, yet there are many more whose strategic knowledge of the game would be a boon for any club.
There were few coaching choices less inspiring than Eakins at the time of his hire. However, today there are a multitude of desirable candidates. Eakins and his staff have been given the green light to implement whatever they may see fit, in order to boost the Ducks into playoff contention. Though with the Anaheim Ducks’ public appraisal that they’re a capable playoff team, it may be that Eakins takes a fall if the start is slow.
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In many ways, it may not entirely be his fault should that occur, as the Anaheim Ducks are very likely to be up against some quality teams in the 2020-2021 Pacific Division playoff race, and will be entering that fight with some fewer weapons then they may desire. Nonetheless, Eakins didn’t inspire in his first season as the Ducks bench boss and, while Bob Murray has publically supported him despite the big names available on the market, it remains to see how long his leash will really be.
Whichever way the Anaheim Ducks choose to move into, it has to be said that dumping the puck in on the power play ~55% of the time is not likely to result in a strong powerplay. It’s very likely that a power play that does such a thing would rate very poorly overall. Low and behold the Ducks power lay was the 30th ranked unit in the league last season.
It can be said that abandoning structure to overload corner contests is likely to leave opposition players open allowing them easier shots on goal if the puck is not recovered at the contest. The Anaheim Ducks were one of the worst teams in the league for goals against.
For the Ducks to move forward they need to find modern strategies that work. Certainly, they need to find players who can score goals with frequency and defencemen who can regain the puck and use it to spring the offense. Yet the straw that mixes that delicious drink is always going to be the coach and his staff. For this reason, the coaching staff is my number one variable the Ducks need to address.
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