Anaheim Ducks: Firing Bob Murray isn’t the Answer

It is undeniable that the Anaheim Ducks have entered into the new season broken down on struggle street. Even the staunchest of supporters have lamented the lack of structure on the defensive end and the unorganised old-school dump and chase offensive system they seem to be attempting to implement.

In many ways, the stellar play of all-world netminder, John Gibson, has papered over a number of cracks in the Ducks foundation. Certainly, it’s important to win 1-0 games in this league, yet it’s perhaps more important to not only win 1-0 games.

Yet, that is the current lay of the land. They’ve been outshot and out-chanced in all but three games thus far this season. The current group of young players, including former golden child Troy Terry, has begun to be rotated in and out of the team after taking further steps back from last years decline.

The veterans that exceeded their expected performances last season have regressed somewhat to the norm. As a result, the Anaheim Ducks are struggling and the catcalls for change have shifted from a soft whisper hidden in the dark depths of the interweb to a violent crescendo that even those of the greatest faith has begun to sing.

As a long-time proponent of change within the Ducks organization, this shift in the atmosphere warms the cockles of my cold dead heart. Yet, I would have to ask if these calls are warranted or if they’re the bleating of sheep more used to the sustained success the Ducks have had in recent times, to the harsh realities of much of the sporting world. To these fans, I offer a contrarian viewpoint, one that is somewhat different from that of which I may most often express.

The State of the Team

Before we go too far, I would ask you to ignore the thoughts of the Anaheim Ducks being a playoff team. For many, the disappointment of this current team falls heavily on the back of the lofty expectations seemingly pushed by the team prior to the season commencing. Yet, maybe we should all ignore that.

If anything the comments seemingly came about from some comments made by Kevin Shattenkirk after he signed with the Ducks as a free agent, and not directly from the mouth of Bob Murray himself. It’s at least conceivable that this was mostly player speak and not something that really was an expectation by the franchise internally. Perhaps I myself was part of driving that “playoff” narrative. Though, if I’m honest, I’m not conceited enough to believe I have that kind of sway with the Anaheim Ducks faithful.

Nonetheless, If we then ignore the idea of playoffs, then do the Anaheim Ducks fall more into line with what their expectations perhaps were prior to those Shattenkirk comments? Do Murrays moves, or lack thereof, make more sense towards forward planning? I’m going to argue that they do.

Prospect Pool

Firstly, let’s talk about the Anaheim Ducks prospect pool. Following on the most recent entry-level draft, the Ducks prospect pool ranking has climbed from the bottom third of the league into the top third. They now boast potential difference-makers at every position.

Lukas Dostal is one of the hottest netminders not in the NHL. Jamie Drysdale provides a focal point on the blue line. Jacob Perreault is as close to a pure shooter you can find on the wing. Brayden Tracey is the do-everything utility type who provides a foil for his linemates on the opposite wing. Trevor Zegras is the potential superstar heir to Ryan Getzlaf that Ducks fans are craving.

Perhaps most interestingly, all of them can skate, and I mean they can skate lights out fast. I mention this only as a reference point for future planning. The Anaheim Ducks have clearly recruited for highly skilled fast skating future. One that reminds perhaps just a little, of the current Colorado Avalanche lineup.

Fans naturally want to see that now. They hunger to see their most prized youngsters play with the big team. Yet, and for all the potential short-term benefit there may be, he plays alongside every other prospect mentioned above, together, in the AHL. From a managerial perspective, there are incredible boons to be gained from this.

Chemistry

These players are all able to gain chemistry together. This occurs both on the ice and off it. We’re talking primarily about teenagers and what they do off the ice makes a world of difference to their lives.

I’m pretty old, but I assume young kids still get together and talk about magic the gathering cards and whatnot. I find it hard to imagine these 17 and 18-year-old kids have a great deal to talk to a grandpa like Ryan Getzlaf about.

Sure Getz comes off as a frat boy, but there is a massive age gap. Someone like Zegras can build a real friendship with his peers when they’re all going through the same things at the same time.

New Skills in a No Pressure Environment

It’s notoriously difficult to learn new skills in a “win-now” environment. Even losing NHL teams are primarily about doing simple things and keeping risks down. The best tanking teams want to lose (at a managerial level), but they want to do it with style and in close hard-fought games that keep the fans engaged.

This environment typically frowns upon no-look back-passes that have as much of a chance of springing the opposition breakaway as they do finding the weave for a player to slip into and score. The risk-to-reward is extremely high and even fans will turn on the player quickly should they fail.

Yet practising these types of skills are what leads to mastery of the skills, and from there, the eventually regular and successful execution of those skills. It’s not as easy as suggesting that players simply perform them in practice. Practice time is limited at the pro level and most often is dedicated to the “big rocks” that make up success. The focus is always on the biggest things that can create team success, not the sexy small things that can turn the individual into a star.

Leaving the kids outside of the public eye (for the most part) in a system that is largely built for the development of NHL athletes, may lend itself for future success by raising the prospects ceiling, or rather allowing them to get closer to it.

Proper Development

It’s worth noting that rushing prospects ahead doesn’t necessarily work out in the teams best interests. The Edmonton Oilers is a classic example of a team with all the draft talent in the world and an utterly abysmal on-ice product. Have the Buffalo Sabres ever amounted to anything despite the talent they accrued early?

The Anaheim Ducks, more recently, made perhaps a similar error bringing in Troy Terry for games in order to burn the first year of his contract. Leaving Trevor Zegras and company to develop for longer is highly likely to result in him becoming a better professional. This may involve simple things like learning how to maintain a financial budget or cook dinner.

We’ve all been 18- or 19-years-old, and I’m willing to go out on a limb and suggest that not many of us had it together enough to create for ourselves the routine required to be the best of the best. Adding to that the pressures of the NHL lifestyle, I think there is a lot to be said for allowing the youngsters the chance to make their mistakes behind closed doors… or at least not on national TV in the public eye.

There are numerous examples of players brought into the NHL too early, yet very few who have had negative effects of playing in the AHL for longer than fans think is important. In an already short season, the Ducks can afford to be patient and ensure that they take a route that is not the well-worn path to sustained mediocrity.

It kicks the salary cap can down the road a little, but that shouldn’t be the primary concern of a franchise. Developing talent and selling tickets should be. A supremely talented, physically robust, and professionally orientated Trevor Zegras and his friends could be the drawcard that sells out Honda centre for a decade or more.

The Right Coach

A fourth reason may be the Anaheim Ducks current head coach. The Ducks brought on Dallas Eakins, in part at least, because of his management of the younger players in San Diego during his stint there. There are some rumours about that suggest that Eakins was brought on behest of the Ducks owners who presumably confused him with David Tennant after watching one too many episodes of “Good Omens.” However, whether that rumour is true or not, that doesn’t necessarily alter how Murray has handled the team around him today.

The illusion that Eakins is a strong development coach was nixed last season when all of the forwards under 25 years of age took significant steps backwards in terms of their scoring output. When considering that very few of the Ducks prospects over the past four seasons have been developed particularly well (and nearly all have succeeded in their new homes), the question needs to be asked whether Eakins is truly the development coach that he was brought in to be.

Bob Murray seemingly does not think that this is the case. None of those young players has really been touched by Eakins, and even very young players like Isac Lundestrom have only had sporadic game time with the Anaheim Ducks senior team. In his case, it may be attempting to evaluate him prior to the Seattle Kraken entry draft next season.

I strongly suspect if it was not the case, he may be left to develop further in the AHL alongside the other future prospects. Nonetheless, if Zegras and company are to be the Ducks future, they’re possibly best able to learn under an experienced developer of players.

Eakins may not be that person, and yet perhaps the coaching group in the AHL is. After all, Kevin Dineen was one of the coaches who moulded Bobby Ryan into the four times 30-goal scorer he was for the Ducks back in his Portland Pirates days.

Taken together, I believe that Murray has done the right thing with the future of the Ducks. He does need to exercise patience, however, having all of the future Anaheim Ducks developing together in a development league is fortuitous happenstance that can only lead to positive results.

That Murray has had the nous to recognise his coaches weaknesses further suggests he’s not failing in this area. There are some questions as to whether he’s doing the right thing, though that flows into a slightly different conversation.

Pro Acquisitions and Trades

Following on from prospects, we should look at the trades Murray has made in recent times and the NHL players he’s brought into the team. What profile do we see from these alone?

For the most part, Murray’s trades have been largely inconsequential at first glance. He hasn’t blown up the team as many (myself included) may have wanted him to do and he hasn’t brought in any particularly big-name players to try and win now.

The big-name players who have been linked to the Anaheim Ducks were each under 23-years-of-age. In and of itself, that age-related acquisition profile suggests that Murray is looking at the long game, but perhaps that’s not all there is angling towards that end.

In the past 12 months, Murray has brought in Sonny Milano, Danton Heinen and Christian Djoos who are all in their prime hockey years. These players, should they stick, could each be potential long-term players for the Ducks, even when the new wave of prospects hits the NHL. Perhaps more importantly, they are young enough to produce at a solid level and be flipped for further assets down the track.

Djoos has unfortunately left the team, yet Milano was brought in for a song thus should he succeed or fail the outlay was minimal. Heinen, almost like a younger version of Silfverberg, needs only to somewhat replicate his success in Boston to be given the opportunity to stay in Ducks color,s else he’ll be shifted for younger draft assets. He, in particular, of all the acquisitions provides the Anaheim Ducks with flexibility and options. These acquisitions play into the future growth of the team.

The other players acquired, including David Backes, Kevin Shattenkirk and for the 20th time, Derek Grant. These older players would seemingly not fit into the profile at first blush, however, I don’t necessarily think that’s true either.

Backes was part of a larger trade that allowed the Ducks to develop their prospect pool. Perrault is now playing in San Diego and fits the timeline alongside Zegras, Tracey, and Dostal. He’s part of a critical mass of players coming into the team at the same time, which is a crucial component to a teams championship success. His salary comes off the books next season at a time when the prospects will likely be pushing into the team.

While the prospects won’t eat up that money, it affords the Ducks the opportunity to push hard for a star free agent, either as a UFA or, heaven forbid, an offer sheet. He provides the Anaheim Ducks with options right when they need them.

Shattenkirk is really a very cheap top-4 defenceman that can either be traded easily for assets, exposed in the expansion draft, or kept for the duration of his deal (2 years after this one). He’s another who provides the Anaheim Ducks options and protection when they need to find those options.

Grant is the odd one out, but he does provide a hell of a penalty-killing presence and ensures that the kids coming into the team won’t be tasked with ridiculous things, like attempting to score from the 4th line. Even young teams need wily veterans to guide them and who better than the Elite 1C, Derek Grant?

On a current team perspective, I believe it’s worth noting that some of Eakins’ most vocal commentary has revolved around not being a fan of drills, and not running morning skates. These decisions are, of course, individual to different groups and in many cases could be considered smart coaching.

In other cases, they would be considered the opposite of that. The Ducks, specifically, have looked unorganised and chaotic in both the defensive zone and pushing forward on offence. Last season, they did get better as games went on.

This improvement may be attributed to a training effect that can be gained by playing the game. Thus, as the players got more comfortable with the schemes and where other players would be, they then became more comfortable skating to the areas they needed to go to, and make passes to open ice where a fellow player would skate into.

There are some issues with this style of play in younger players, who typically require more repetitions than a veteran, to master a particular skill or play. For example, and these are completely arbitrary numbers, someone like Jakob Silfverberg may have run a 2-1-2 scheme 400 times in his career to date, whereas Sam Steel may not have run it at the pro level at all.

Silf, in this instance, will require fewer repetitions to get up to speed as he’s already mastered the plays that come off of that setup. We saw with the Anaheim Ducks last season, many of the veteran players presented excellent numbers that exceeded their projections. They mastered the new system early. The younger players (eg Jacob Larsson) took longer to do so.

Thus, Murray has put together this roster to somewhat take advantage of Eakins coaching style, as it were. A veteran roster is more likely to pick up his teachings than a youthful squad, and as such the majority of the roster is made up of veteran players. 1/6 of the defence and 1/3 of the forward group is under 25 years old. In essence, it was never a roster built to win games, but prior to the Djoos loss, could easily be considered a roster build not to lose games.

It really was a strong defence. Losing Djoos and Josh Manson put a big hit on the depth of that defensive roster. While it’s been a boon for someone like Jani Hakanpaa, he’s probably not going to sway anyone to believe he’s a night-in, night-out top 4 defenceman. Certainly not a top pairing guy.

From there, the Anaheim Ducks went from being a defensive team with an incredibly strong top-5 group of defencemen to a top-3 and a couple of guys who are punching out of their weight class. Injuries happen of course, and the Ducks cap situation is that they weren’t going to be able to bring in big-name defencemen to cover the loss. For a team that was built almost entirely around defensive hockey and not losing by significant margins, those losses are just a little too much to handle.

While I do truly think Murray wanted this team to be competitive, creating a veteran roster has perhaps an underrated effect of keeping the youth in San Diego developing together. As stated above, this move may be the best for their long-term future.

Taken together, I believe that while the trades and acquisitions haven’t necessarily pushed the team to become a “contender” or even a strong playoff team, they have provided the Ducks with flexibility leading into the Kraken expansion draft and moving forward as the Anaheim Ducks future steadily move into the team. In a lot of ways, it appears more that these moves have been made with that future in mind and only the hope that the current team would be entertaining.

The Coach

There isn’t much more to say about the coach that I haven’t said before. Statistically, one of the worst coaches in league history, Eakins has been behind the eight-ball his entire tenure. That he’s unable to do the job he was hired to do (develop young players) leads many to question why Murray would continue to keep him around.

Part of it may the rumor mentioned above, though in effect, I truly doubt it. I suspect that it’s more to do with a financial situation and the Anaheim Ducks being a budget team lacking the income of gate sales. If Eakins was removed now, they would be forced to pay his salary as well as the incoming coaches salary. It may simply be an expense too far in a season without ticket sales and particularly so for a team that really isn’t expected to do a great deal this season. Given the moves highlighted above, it seems likely that Murray is playing the long game with this team, and if they surprised him this season then more power to them.

Given that, perhaps Murray has decided it’s foolish to do too much when there’s no real gain to be made in the short term. If anything it’s plausible that an incoming coach would improve the team just enough to be a bubble playoff performer and not be bad enough to secure a further high draft selection.

Let’s be realistic for a moment. Are the Anaheim Ducks a strong enough team to beat the Colorado Avalanche, St Louis Blues, or Vegas Golden Knights in a best of seven series or would it merely be hoping John Gibson can shut them down to 1-goal or less each game? I think most of us, intrinsically, think it would mostly be a fools hope.

Conversely, with players such as Owen Powers available at the top end of this seasons draft, the Ducks could really have their rebuild on track. That one extra big-time defenceman, even if not a sure superstar, would allow the Ducks to potentially play a strong link game with talent on the ice more often than not, in future years.

They’d have Drysdale on one pairing, and Power on the other. Should the Ducks continue to track as they are, that option is surely open to them even should they stay as-is without making significant changes to the team . For surely, right now, they are blowin’ for Owen.

In essence, keeping Eakins around almost ensures that the Anaheim Ducks are in the driver’s seat for another top 10 draft selection. It’s a harsh reality, yet there is no doubt that the current group is both under-equipped for a playoff spot and underperforming again the talent they already have.