The Ducks have made the most noise over the summer since their seven-season playoff drought began, but will their ambition come to fruition and will their activity lead to achievement?
Whereas last season they came up empty-handed in free agency despite possessing an obscene amount of salary-cap space, this time they landed Mikael Granlund, who had been coveted by teams firmly ahead of the Ducks in the Western Conference standings. They had already acquired another firmly-in-his-30s forward, seizing a buy-low opportunity on former 52-goal scorer Chris Kreider as the New York Rangers angled to open up cap space for former Kings defenseman Vladislav Gavrikov.
Their biggest addition of the offseason may have been not on the bench but behind it. They abruptly fired Greg Cronin, who presided over the second largest leap in the NHL standings and the biggest in the West last year, and then oh-so-slowly confirmed the obvious: they were hiring Joel Quenneville. Quenneville lugged four Stanley Cups in tow, but also the baggage of a grim scandal in Chicago that left him out of the game for the better part of four seasons.
“(The Ducks) took a really big step last year. With some of the new players that are coming in and with ‘Coach Q’ coming in, it really feels like we’re taking the next step,” said Granlund, whose 66 points last season were three shy of a career high. “It’s not about just (developing) some players and learning, it’s about starting to win some hockey games.”
The NHL’s investigation into Quenneville was lightyears from flattering, indicating that he not only was aware of sexual assault allegations against video coach Brad Aldrich toward at least one Chicago prospect, Kyle Beach (Quenneville said he was unaware until 2021, previously), but but that he also provided Aldrich with a favorable evaluation at year’s end. Three years later, Aldrich pled guilty to sexually assaulting a high-school player in Michigan.
Quenneville has shown what the Ducks consider to be appropriate contrition, though in his lengthy introduction nothing was said or asked about another player currently suing the Blackhawks in litigation similar to the Beach lawsuit. Ducks players have emphasized Quenneville’s success, particularly with the Blackhawks, where he won Cups in 2010, 2013 and 2015. Frank Vatrano played for him in Florida and played up his locker-room presence. Ryan Strome said he hadn’t followed the scandal too closely. Granlund said his experience was invaluable.
“He has won in this league, a few times. He knows what winning takes and how the game looks when you’re winning,” Granlund said. “That’s a big thing in the NHL, you have to know what it takes to be a good team, what it takes to actually win something.”
The Ducks won just a little something last year, chasing a .500 points percentage until nearly the final game of the season, and showed individual improvement among some cornerstone players. Overall, however, their special-teams and underlying numbers were atrocious, reflecting in part a team that has sold off more than it has replaced in terms of established talent year after year during its doldrums.
Part of this offseason was also about resolution, especially for the man who had been the longest-tenured Duck, John Gibson, and for another who had been the team’s leading scorer just two years ago, Trevor Zegras.
In a swap that netted a couple of mid-tier draft picks and enough salary flexibility to bring back Ville Husso as a veteran No. 3 netminder, Gibson was dealt to the Detroit Red Wings. The deal didn’t make the Ducks’ goaltending any better, younger or significantly cheaper, but it did re-home Gibson to a place where he can both get starts and get a fresh start.
Zegras was shipped to Philadelphia after roughly a year of intermittent discussions with the Flyers. The not-so-star-studded return was a second-round pick (which became center Eric Nilson at the draft), a future fourth-rounder and fourth-line center Ryan Poehling. Zegras had a year left on his contract and the Ducks owned his restricted free-agent rights for next year, but they settled for a modest package ostensibly to remove Zegras from limbo after two injury-plagued campaigns.
With Zegras departing between Kreider and Granlund’s arrivals, the Ducks’ top nine effectively added one player. For a team that has finished last in the league in goals of every kind across the third-longest playoff drought in the NHL, that’s likely not enough of an augmentation to move the needle without some larger-than-foreseeable steps forward from the Ducks talented but inconsistent young core.
Two members of that core, forward Mason McTavish and goalie Lukáš Dostál, are still without contracts. Both are restricted free agents. There was some brief unsubstantiated hubbub (much like the ephemeral Troy Terry trade rumors) about one or the other signing an offer sheet, until Dostál filed for salary arbitration, as GM Pat Verbeek predicted. McTavish has no arbitration rights, but Verbeek assured fans that both players would be signed without significant delay.
“We’re working on that, we’re starting to work on that stuff a little harder now. We wanted to get through free agency,” Verbeek said on July 1. “We’re going to work to negotiate a deal long before (Dostál’s arbitration hearing), and then Mason, we’ll do the same thing. We’ve got some time now to really get after it and get both those players under contract.”