dtsdlaw

We also could have ended up with Turcotte based on pre-draft projections. I'm pretty darn happy with getting Zegras at 9th OA. I think it worked out amazing for us.

There's a big difference between making changes to improve the team and selling off your best players who are in their statistical primes to do a full rebuild. I'm old enough to remember the Oilers being swept by the Winnipeg Jets in the 1st round of the 2021 playoffs, but I don't remember them selling McDavid or Draisaitl to start another rebuild. I do remember them replacing Tippett with Woodcroft behind the bench and then making trades and signing UFAs to plug holes and fill gaps though. btw, I'm not defending any of the moves Bob made to try to re-tool on the fly around the players we had in 2018, because I think he absolutely sucked at that job. But I just think it's ridiculous to suggest that rebuilding was the proper course of action at that time. There are no NHL GMs that would have started a rebuild in 2018 under similar circumstances based on the talent we had, so it's a bit silly to criticize Bob for not doing it.

Carlyle's system was to basically concede shots (lots of them) from the outside and from bad angles. Gibson wasn't facing a disproportionate amount of high danger chances if I recall.

Fowler sat out that entire series with a shoulder injury and the Ducks gifted the Sharks 20 power plays in four games (really undisciplined play caused by bad coaching IMO) while Gibson and Miller combined for an .876 save %. It was a s--t show for sure, but that doesn't take away from the fact that the Ducks defense gave up the 4th fewest goals in the NHL in 2017-18, and they were returning for the 2018-19 season with Gibson (age 25), Lindholm (25), Fowler (27), Montour (24), Manson (27), Henrique (28), and Rakell (24), along with the Twins who still had three years left on their contracts. No GM in their right mind is selling of their young players to do a scorched earth rebuild in those circumstances. You also have to keep in mind that GMBM had just given up Shea Theodore in the 2017 expansion draft to keep that defensive core together, so there's no way he was going to pull the plug on it one season later based on a single playoff performance that didn't even include Fowler. So yeah, this is all context that's important to remember when looking back on whether Bob should have done a full rebuild after the 4-0 sweep in 2018. The facts on the ground at the time matter.

Thinking really long term, a bridge now might be the better option way down the road. If Zegras signs for 8 years now, that deal expires when he's 30, which means the Ducks are going to be in a tough spot for his next contract if they want to keep him around into his 30s. If he's still a very good player, he's most likely going to want 5-6+ years at a pretty significant cap hit, and do those contract ever age well for 30+ y/o guys who sign for big money and term? So the Ducks would either be walking away from a 30-year-old Zegras due to his exorbitant contract demands or signing a 30-year-old Zegras to a contract that is almost certainly going to become an albatross (unless he turns out to be a freak of nature like Kopitar or Bergeron). In contrast, if you bridge him for 2-3 years and then sign him for 8 years at age 24/25, that big contract expires at age 32 or 33. His next contract would therefore likely be much more manageable, or it would be much more palatable to walk away from him at that age. So while it may cost a bit more during his prime years, the long-term financial health of the franchise may be better if the Ducks bridge him now. Also, I can't help but wonder if Verbeek is still under orders to keep the payroll low until ownership recoups makes up more of the lost revenue from 2020-present. I know they're billionaires, but they have to be pretty far in the red by now on the hockey side, right? We've talked before about how our GMs typically have to navigate an internal budget based on the team's internal bookkeeping, so I think it's possible ownership may be putting some pressure on Verbeek to keep salaries a bit lower until the team is ready to win again and butts are back in seats. And since most bridge deals have a progressive salary structure to maximize the QO in the final year, a 3-year bridge for Zegras at something like $5.5M-$7M-$8.5M ($7M AAV) would accomplish keeping the team's overall salary a bit lower for another couple of seasons until the team is really ready to start challenging for the playoffs again.

How do you know this? It would seem to me that if he wanted an 8 x $8M contract that his arbitration ask for a 1-year contract would have been significantly higher. Just like how Verbeek's $4.5M arbitration offer was really just for 1 year. Nobody actually believes that Verbeek was trying to get Terry for 7 x $4.5M so why should we then believe that Terry's arbitration ask was also the same for an 8 year deal?

No, most GMs would have fired the coach, not blown up the team.

Regarding the bolded, I don’t believe you. They were a 101 point team in 17-18 with arguably the best goalie tandem in the league (Gibson-Miller) and a defense consisting of Fowler (26), Lindholm (24), Manson (26), Montour (23)… all guys entering their prime. No GM anywhere would have looked at that situation on the blue line and in net during the summer of 2018 and said “yeah, we can’t win with this group. Better blow it up!” Especially with your 33-year-old franchise center having three years left on his contract, and being only one season removed from making it to the conference finals.

You've thrown context completely out the window. I know some fans like to pretend like they were all in on a rebuild immediately after the Ducks got swept by the Sharks in 2018, but that was still a 101 point team with three more years of Getzlaf and Perry locked up. Ducks fans would have lost their minds if Bob had decided to bail on the Twins final three seasons to start a rebuild after one bad playoff performance. And the 2018-19 season was marred by the team giving up completely on Carlyle, so no one really knew if the problem was Carlyle, the personnel (which suffered from massive injuries up and down the lineup that season), or both. So the earliest it would have made sense to start a rebuild was 2019-20, which was the season after Perry missed 51 games due to his knee injury and was subsequently bought out. But that was right when both Manson and Rakell started experiencing their own string of injuries, which led to several bad seasons from both. Had Bob traded them back then, he would have been trading them at the bottom of their market value due to injuries and performance problems. Seriously, what kind of value do you think Rakell had in 19-20 when he potted just 15 goals and missed 17 games, or in 20-21 when he missed 24 games and potted just 9 goals? Or how about Manson after he missed 26 games in 19-20 and 33 games in 20-21? They didn't have the value back then that you think they did.

Historical negationism - a distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear to have occurred and/or impacted history in a way that is in drastic disagreement with the historical record.

I think that this is more true when a GM is brought in at the start of a rebuild and has to extricate the team from a lot of bad contracts. So someone like Mike Grier is going to get a lot of patience because of how horrible the situation is that he inherited in San Jose. Some fans argue that this team was in shambles when Verbeek was hired, but I couldn't disagree more. Verbeek stepped into a really, REALLY good situation with (1) Zegras, Drysdale, and McTavish already having been drafted, (2) oodles of cap space to play with, (3) no really bad contracts that he's had to get rid of, (4) no hostile media that he has to deal with, (5) a very good amateur scouting department led by Martin Madden, (6) an analytics group headed by a solid AGM who was an executive with LA for their two Cups, (7) lots of support from franchise legends (Teemu, Scotty, and Kariya), and (8) laissez-faire owners that won't meddle in his business. He even inherited a coach on an expiring contract whose option for a 4th season he was under no obligation to pick up. Can you name a better rebuilding situation that a new GM has stepped into anywhere in the NHL, ever? I bet nobody here can. So my take is that Verbeek isn't getting the same amount of patience from a lot of fans because he really hasn't had to deal with any of the serious challenges that other rebuilding GMs have had to deal with. Has he even hired any hockey ops people yet other than Mike Barwis? Honestly, he's had it pretty easy compared to the vast majority of rebuilds. And Beeker even told us when he was hired that this team was already part way through a rebuild when he arrived. This job was set up beautifully for him when he walked in the door. He needs to show us more than what's he's shown so far.

You mean Ducks fans AND the starting goaltender, right?

Sure, but what happens if Beeker makes a cup o' noodles for you, tells you that they're well cooked and will taste as good as cup o' noodles can taste, and then you try them and they are the worst noodles you've ever eaten in the analytics era? Are you going to trust him to make you a second cup o' noodles for lunch the next day? Or do you start to play armchair chef a little?

I can't tell, but maybe you missed my point. When the Blackhawks won their first Cup in 2010 (age 21 for Toews and Kane), Duncan Keith was 26, Seabrook was 24, Brian Campbell was 30, Brent Sopel was 33, and Byfuglien was 24. They started building their defense before Kane/Toews arrived so that those guys could thrive with a backend already stabilized. Pittsburgh went the same way. Crosby's first trip to the Cup finals at age 20 was supported by a strong backend that included Gonchar (33), Orpik (27), Scuderi (29), Hal Gill (32), and Ryan Whitney (24). That seems to be the winning formula for tear-down rebuilds - i.e. stabilize the defense and then let the young elite forwards grow within that structure. Ottawa is currently doing that. New Jersey too. It's no coincidence that Fitzgerald's first big move in Jersey was to ink Dougie Hamilton to a 7 x $9M contract in 2021, even before that team had shown any signs of being on the rise.

I don't consider the Avs a tear-down rebuild. That was basically a re-tool to get to their current SC winning group. Sure they had some high draft picks along the way, but they never even had consecutive sub-.500 seasons. It was good season, bad season, good season, bad season. Plenty of success to build on before finally finding the right mix of players (and hitting the lottery on Makar). Meanwhile, the Ducks have had five straight sub-.500 seasons, which included two sub-.400 seasons. And they're being picked most places to finish bottom-3 in the league again this coming season. Their rebuild looks more like Chicago and Pittsburgh from the 2000s than it does the Avs re-tool over the past 6 seasons.

Are we building it properly though? When I look at the tear-down rebuilds that have been successful, pretty much all of them put a solid defense in place first which provided a team structure and culture that allowed for their young stud forwards to grow into winners. We're doing the opposite, pretty much like what Edmonton has tried and failed at despite having arguably the two best forwards in the NHL.

I disagree with this. I think the new life would have come with a coaching change. As far as knowing who was available and would have come here? There was a lot of coaching turnover in 2022 and you can always find coaches who want an HC job, even in Anaheim. And I'm virtually certain that Cronin was available. He's been available for a long time. I also believe that the market for players who were willing to come to Anaheim likely shrank when Lindholm and Rakell were traded, because it was a signal that Verbeek was leaning into a heavier rebuild. Fewer players want to sign somewhere that they know there's going to be a lot of losing for the foreseeable future. So the trades actually impacted the market negatively for the Ducks. I would also argue that the Klingberg addition actually made the team worse rather than better last season, and I don't think Klingberg would have been added at $7M if Lindholm had been re-signed at $6.5-$7M either. I also have doubts that Vatrano would have been added if Rakell had re-signed. And personally, I think Rakell is a much better player than Vatrano, so that swap is good with me. I don't think this would have been a playoff team last season with Lindholm and Rakell retained, but I'd have put them at around 80-82 points and in position to draft a decent forward like Yager or Benson in this past draft. I think there also would have been more of a feeling that they were a team on the rise with the coming of age of Zegras, Terry, McTavish, Drysdale, OZ, etc. - more like how Ottawa is viewed around the league today. Good players want to play in Ottawa these days, even though they've been bad for a while, because they see a team moving in a positive direction. In contrast, hardly anyone sees Anaheim moving in a positive direction for the 2023-24 season. We have a circus surrounding our starting goaltender's trade demands, we can't get our RFAs signed in a timely manner, and most hockey people are picking us to finish bottom-3 in the league again. We talked a lot at the time about how one of the biggest risks in trading those guys was the possibility of creating a losing culture in Anaheim. Welp, Verbeek has done that, and it started with the 2022 trade deadline and his decision that summer to keep Eakins for another season. And now Verbeek also had to massively overpay aging players like Gudas and Killorn to come here to try to turn around a bad culture that he himself is largely responsible for after a historically bad season.

It's true, there's zero chance we get Carlsson if Verbeek doesn't go full tank for 2022-23. And Carlsson might turn into a really incredible player, on par with a Jack Eichel even. And we all know how well that tanking strategy worked out for Buffal...... oh, wait, nevermind. And speaking of Eichel, how are those Zegras contract negotiations coming?

I think we can all agree that 2020-21 was Rakell's worst season as a pro too. 9G/19A in 52 games. Hockey reference says he played ~763 minutes at 5-on-5 that season. His primary centers according to Natural Stat Trick were: Lundestrom (292 mins), Getzlaf (219 mins), Steel (109 mins), Henrique (97 mins), Zegras (46 mins), Grant (35 mins). I'm sure it's just a coincidence though. *We're also talking about him playing the 2020-21 season with a 35-year-old Getzlaf, a 21-year-old Lundestrom, and a 19-year-old Zegras. Not exactly NHL centers playing in their most productive years.

For the 2018-19, 2019-2020, and 2020-21 seasons, hockeyreference.com says that Rakell played about 2674 minutes at 5-on-5. According to Natural Stat Trick, his four most common centers during that time were Getzlaf (1180 mins), Henrique (504 mins), Lundestrom (410 mins), Steel (322). He also played 82 mins with Grant. Just 62 mins total over those three seasons were with Kesler. So while he certainly played a lot with Getzlaf (who was ages 33-35 during that stretch) and some with Rico, he also played about 1/3 of his 5-on-5 minutes with Lundestrom, Steel, and Grant. I don't blame you for not remembering, though. I try to forget those three seasons too.... In 2021-22, Rakell played ~752 minutes at 5-on-5, and according to Natural Stat Trick, 498 of those minutes were with Zegras. 141 mins were with Rico and 109 were with Getzlaf. Not a surprise that his goal scoring rebounded to a 25-goal pace that season while playing nearly all of his 5-on-5 minutes with Zegras, Rico, and Getzlaf.

There’s a big difference between being centered by Steel or Lundestrom and being centered by Getzlaf or Crosby. You just jumped to the other extreme. I thought Rakell looked really good in the time he got to play with Zegras. He was on a 25G/82 game pace the season he was traded too. And he scored 28G with Crosby last season, so he’s close to being the same guy in Pittsburgh that he was his final season in Anaheim (and during previous seasons when the whole team was good and we weren’t relying on 3rd and 4th liners to play top-6 roles).

Neither of those guys are elite. You either need elite players to be a great team, or you need a LOT of very good players. Raks and Hampus had neither. It doesn’t mean they were part of the problem though. The problem was who they were playing with. Rakell-Steel/Lundestrom-Silfverberg was a regular thing for a couple of years. What exactly did we expect Rakell to do on that line? And who was Lindholm playing with for his last few seasons here? Manson couldn’t stay healthy so his partner was a revolving door of terrible. Those guys weren’t the problem. It was the lack of development from the next generation like Steel, Lundestrom, Jones, and Larsson, a really terrible coaching hire, and the aging out/njuries to Getzlaf, Perry, and Kesler that caused this team to go in the toilet.

Considering the seasons that Rakell and Lindholm just had after being traded, it’s not far fetched to believe that replacing Eakins right away in 2022, adding a few UFAs that summer, and letting Zegras, Terry, McTavish, and Drysdale continue with their development would have breathed new life in to those two very high level players and started the ascent a lot sooner. It probably would have removed Anaheim from quite a few 10- and 15-team NTCs too. And I brought up Gudas and Killorn because all throughout the debate over whether to trade those guys in 2022 the main argument for trading them revolved around aging curves. Kind of ironic now considering the moves Verbeek has made to try to fill their holes in the lineup.

Tom Fitzgerald comes to mind.