g20topdogg
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Posts posted by g20topdogg
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7 minutes ago, tommer-1 said:
If they are not under contract - and they aren't - they cannot be involved in anything related to the team.
Right. I was replying to them not being in town. They are. They just aren't with the team but it's probably a sign that things are close on a contract for both.
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24 minutes ago, BombaysTripleDeke said:
Looks like everyone except for Zegras and Drysdale are already in town also, doing media and just meeting up with each other prior to camp.
I thought I remember hearing that both were in fact in town. I thought that was mentioned in the duck my life news video. There was even a photo of both with someone (I forget who) but Drysdale looks different, like older and more muscular.
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1 hour ago, turnonthejets87 said:
McTavish is more captain material. He’s always first on and last off the ice. Leads by example.
I watched the Ducks rookie camp today and it was mentioned that Henrique, Fowler and McT were there watching. I get the first two, they're two veterans hoping to see the future of the team and kind of have that leadership role. But it's interesting that McT was there too. Maybe there is that captain aspect to it. Though I would think Terry and Fowler would be ahead of him on the chart, no?
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I think the YouTube channel Duck my life is going to stream the practice.
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Since we're starting this thread...
Let's hope to a good season of progress and actually something to cheer about. Tired of losing, let's play some meaningful hockey soon!
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2 hours ago, HockeyIzCool said:
The last thing the Ducks need to start a season where they where they were supposed to improve, and coming off a season where they had the worst record in the league, is for their projected superstar and projected future #1 defenseman, nowhere to be seen.
It is what it is. No Drysdale is a wash, since he didn't play last season, but adding Carlsson while subtracting Zegras, is 1 step forward and 2 steps back.
As per usual, they had a ho-hum off season, not really doing anything spectacular in the FA market. They got rid of a bad coach, and brought in an unproven one, but even he can't be expected to turn dog poop into filet mignon.
Well, we're 3 weeks away from the start of the season, and the clock is ticking. And finishing last this season, won't even get us the opportunity of being screwed out of a generational #1 pick, which we never really had a shot at to begin with. I know, conspiracy talk, but let's face it, that's what you get when #3 Market A team, leaps over #1 & #2 Market C teams.
I honestly have come to accept the reality that the Ducks will never again hoist the Cup, let alone contend for it in the Finals, but I would like to see some quality hockey at some point, and perhaps attend a Playoff game this decade. Hope that's not asking for too much, although I am saving money, and can feel free to make April, May & June vacation plans in January, if I so desire.
What do you mean? We signed the biggest contracts in FA. If anything we did the MOST out of any team in FA. The unfortunate timing of it all is this FA class wasn't the greatest. Oh well, you can't time everything I guess.
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2 hours ago, tommer-1 said:
One thing is for sure happening so far leading up to the start of the season:
Zegras, obviously, is not the face for anything Ducks.
It's all Troy Terry.
NHL Media tour in Vegas
Angel/Ducks Night
It makes sense because Terry got his big extension while Zegras is still unsigned. I still think Z man Zegras is the face of the team or at least the future face. Maybe this signals that Terry will be our new captain? If Z gets a bridge I could for sure see that happening.
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1 hour ago, dtsdlaw said:
left-to-right, I think it's Vatrano, Dostal, Killorn, Jones, McTavish
I think you're right. I couldn't figure out who the first guy is.
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21 minutes ago, dtsdlaw said:
If his shoulder isn’t 100% then that’s a huge concern. It was supposed to be a 4-6 month recovery and we’re going on 10+ months since the surgery.
As far as missing time, if he’s even close to healthy he needs to be skating with the team. Do it in a non contact jersey if need be, but he’s gotta be out there learning the new system with his teammates, especially after not playing hockey for almost a full calendar year.
I also don’t think a 2-year bridge that takes him to arbitration rights makes any sense for the club. Drysdale will gain leverage in his next negotiation through good play, but there’s no reason at this point to just hand him more leverage. The Ducks should be negotiating again with him next summer when he’s still one year away from arb rights.
I'm not sure why Drysdale's contact isn't done yet. Imo it seemed like the easiest of the three to get done. Verbeek sat around playing this long game. Now Sanderson signed a huge deal and I think it had thrown a wrench into the negotiations. Granted it doesn't really matter what anyone gets because Drys doesn't have any leverage. But still I'm not liking the way Verbeek does things.
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2 hours ago, BombaysTripleDeke said:
I agree but Tampa has an undeniably elite group of core players in their primes though that the Ducks didn’t. When you have those guys you are always going to be contending and have a longer window. That’s when you start trading picks and prospects to supplement your team for deep runs. When the Ducks core declined/got injured the cup window closed and wasn’t going to be extended
I think if Bob shopped less in the clearance isle and more in the pricier name brand sections we'd probably either win a cup or extend our contention window. It's why I'm hesitant when I'm seeing Verbeek do many of the same things.
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5 hours ago, perry_mvp said:
Sure but was Eaves the best way to use that pick? It was pretty well known that he was injury prone.
Yes, Chicago eventually got that 29th OA pick and selected Jokiharju. He was traded to Buffalo for Alex Nylander. He was traded to Pittsburgh for Sam Lafferty. He was traded recently to Toronto in a package where Chicago gets a 2025 1st round pick. So two teams that didn't really lose out on that trade were Chicago and Dallas. Anaheim got a grand total of 36 games including playoffs out of Eaves. We really don't know who Anaheim may have been scouting before that trade. Maybe it Jokiharju or maybe it was someone else.
I mentioned Tampa and I'll do it again. They arguably extended their cup window by trading for good players using their picks. Eaves was a good pickup and had instant chemistry with Getzy. Maybe if we're smarter with our trades we try to find younger and less injury prone guys. It's still sort of a losing strategy because eventually you run out of luck and prospects. But if you're smart you get actual players that can help extend your runs.
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5 hours ago, dtsdlaw said:
Absolutely.
I'd also add to this that Toronto doesn't seem to really care about their overall cap structure, so it's not really a model that I think Verbeek should be following (esp. as a "budget" team). Toronto gave the moon and the stars to 3 players, and as a result they haven't been able to put a decent defense together and now they have an elite player in Nylander wondering why he can't be paid his market value in Toronto too.
If the Ducks really want to do this rebuild right, they should be trying to copy Tampa as much as possible, not Toronto. Tampa's got superstars making big money, but they also have a pretty tight cap structure, and guys who don't fit in to that structure have to move on. $9.5M is their upper limit for AAVs, and everyone else falls in line proportionally for their value to the team. And that limit was set by Kucherov and later Point, both of whom took 3-year bridge deals to establish their overall value before signing their max 8-year deals.
IMO, Verbeek needs to make sure that Zegras is going to be the best player on the team before giving him a max contract, so the bridge makes sense from an organizational standpoint, even if it ends up costing a bit more. If he goes $9.5M to Zegras without seeing how Zegras develops (or even knowing what position he's going to end up playing), and then Carlsson and McTavish turn out to be significantly better players, then the team's overall cap structure breaks down and you just get each successive contract leapfrogging the last contract until gaping holes are created in other areas of the lineup. So if I were GM, I'd be bridging at least Zegras (and also McTavish) to see if I can establish a good contract structure for my team for the next decade, just like Tampa has.
So if we can get Zegras at something like a 3 x $7M AAV bridge, and then he ends up on a subsequent 8 x $10.5M contract until age 33, I'd be really good with that. We'd guarantee 11 years of Zegras in Anaheim and we'd have locked in a lot of certainty to the cap structure that can keep the team really competitive for a very long time.
I think that's a good way to manage the cap structure. Though to be fair Tampa has no income tax while Cali has one of the highest taxes in the league so the 9.5 figure probably wouldn't work but the idea makes sense. Although point and kucherov are far better players than anyone we currently have on the open market they would get a lot more than 9.5.
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2 hours ago, perry_mvp said:
Let me ask you a serious question: If you had the choice of keeping (1) Zegras or keeping (2)Henrique and Silverberg which would you prefer? Option one or option two?
So Zegras out produces both of those guys. Ok why should that matter? He should be given a comparable contract for HIS production and his peers and not because you can take a bunch of guys, add them together and their production is less for say 15 mil. Does that mean we should give Zegras 15 mil? It's a weird comparison that doesn't apply here. Zegras should be worth comparable to his peers with similar production. Tommer mentioned Aho. I'm asking the question, why is Zegras being valued much higher?
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You'd have to think that this contract would affect Drysdales bridge deal also right? Like after seeing this maybe the hold up is how much Drysdale is worth given these kinds of contacts. Before I thought maybe he takes a 3-4 mil deal for 2-3 years but now he's probably arguing he's worth at least 5-6 mil right?
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6 hours ago, tommer-1 said:
I don't think that was the approach for Matthews, although they did buy one year of UFA for him - this season. I think they were paying him at about his market value - or what it would be over those 5 years - in 2019 when he signed that 5-year, $11.6 mil contract. It made him the highest paid Maple Leaf, and I think McDavid was at $12.5 mil, so I guess you could argue that his deal could have been about $400k AAV more, maybe?
They weren't trying to get him cheap on an AAV, just "cheap" on total contract (ie. not $12 mil for 8 years).
I think Zegras right now for 5 years at about $9.5 mil AAV would be similar to that. 5 years at $7.75 mil to me sounds like you just want him for 5 years and you don't care after that, and you are trying to get him undervalued for at least a couple of those years. 5 years around $9.5 mil sounds more like you want to give him two 5-year deals, more or less. It's a difference of $8.75 mil over the contract, but it might be money well spent if he performs and extends.
That seems too high. You made a comparison to Aho who put up better numbers in his final year to get a contract that's just under 8.5. Why are you valuing Zegras at over 1.25 mil more per year? I'd go close to 9 mil. Anything more than that is an overpay at this time. Zegras is a good player, he just hasn't shown enough to get that large of a contract. I seriously doubt any team would offer him that much even if he went ufa right now.
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5 hours ago, dtsdlaw said:
Again, some of that is hindsight. For example, there were a lot of people salivating over Sam Steel's upside when he was still just a prospect, expecting the torch to be passed to him as our next great 1C.
Which brings us to what I believe is really the only way to re-tool a veteran team - you have to be willing to trade your prospects for current NHL players that make your team more competitive in the short term. Bob never really had the stomach for that though. He was too enamored with hoarding draft picks and then keeping his prospects until they had no more utility. In fact, the only high end prospect that I can think of him trading for a true NHLer was, sadly, Wild Bill Karlsson.
If he was intent on re-tooling, which I still think he could have done for another couple of playoff runs, what he should have done is put Larsson, Steel, Jones, and Comtois on the trade block as soon as they showed promise as post-draft prospects. That's how you add good players on the fly. Basically the reverse of what Colorado, Pittsburgh, and Boston did to us when they acquired Manson, Rakell, and Lindholm. We got a bunch of mid-level prospects (Clang, Vaakanainen, Helleson) who may never be legit NHLers, and those teams got top-end guys in their primes who they then re-signed to extend their Cup windows by a couple of years. That doesn't save a team from the eventual tear-down rebuild, but that's how it's done if you want to squeeze a few more competitive seasons out of your current crop of good-to-great players. Like in 2018, Sam Steel (whose value was really high at the time) + our 2018 1st (which became Lundestrom) would have put us in the conversation for Ryan O'Reilly, which could have been a game changer for a few more seasons, but there was no chance that Bob would have been willing to part with those assets even for ROR. It just wasn't in his nature to do a proper re-tool, so the Ducks got stuck in the mushy middle for a few seasons.
I think what Tampa is doing by trading their 1st rd picks for legit nhl players is pretty smart. It will probably come back to bite you in the end but if you think about it what are the chances your 20+ draft pick ends up being a good nhler? Whereas you trade it for a known nhler. If we had traded those Lundestrom, Jones, Steel, Tracy, etc picks for legit nhl talent maybe we end up contending for the Cup longer. But then again Rakell, Perry, Gibson are guys that you miss out on potentially. Late round picks that end up being really good players who also would help contend and on bargain ELC's. So it's a gamble for sure but if your contention window is open I think it's actually a pretty smart decision because you for sure get nhl talent for those picks rather than gamble on whether or not they become that. But like Detroit it will come back to haunt you when your prospect pipeline is junk.
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1 minute ago, g20topdogg said:
I think 8x8.75 would be a good deal for both sides. Z gets more than Hughes and closer to 9 mil. The team gets him for 8 years and if he goes off then we get a good contract. But there's also a lot of risk for the team here as well because if Zegras stays a 60-70 pt player that contract will be pretty bad.
It's also bigger than Perry's contract. Granted they signed a long time ago but Pears had to get a Hart and Richard to earn that.
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6 hours ago, tommer-1 said:
I've said before, if I was close to him - not his agent, or maybe even if I was his agent - I would advise him to take the security of an 8-year deal, as long as it was somewhere in the ballpark of $8 mil AAV. Same if he was my son or brother or close friend. The one caveat would be if he did not see himself in ANA long-term, for any number of reasons.
No idea what advice he is getting. No idea if GMPV is even offering 8 years, or how far apart the two sides are. My guess?
GMPV is offering 7 years at $7.25-$7.5 mil
Zegras wants 8 years at around $9.25 mil
There are currently 30 guys making $9.25 AAV and up, for reference.
I think 8x8.75 would be a good deal for both sides. Z gets more than Hughes and closer to 9 mil. The team gets him for 8 years and if he goes off then we get a good contract. But there's also a lot of risk for the team here as well because if Zegras stays a 60-70 pt player that contract will be pretty bad.
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4 hours ago, BombaysTripleDeke said:
If the Ducks aren’t showing an improvement and path forward by the end of 2024-25 season then I think Verbeek’s seat should start getting hot. I agree that He’s been too similar to Murray for my liking.
You're probably right that he will get that time but I think fans are going to start getting ruffled up if this season won't have some kind of good progress. We need to show improvement but if PV wastes this season on trying to get another bottom 3 pick, sure it's great that we're getting top picks but like someone else mentioned that we're heading in the direction of the oilers who wasted season after season in mediocrity.
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31 minutes ago, BombaysTripleDeke said:
We'll find out in in the next 2-3 seasons. I've maintained that the Ducks needed to tear down the roster more than Murray was willing to do. I think Verbeek doing that and moving on from players was the right game plan. the execution is always the hard part. There was no easy or quick way back to contending imo. My theory is that the Ducks would been better trading Fowler, but since they couldn't, Lindholm was going to get moved. I didn't see the Ducks weren't going to pay both of them long-term.
How much time should Verbeek get before concluding whether he was right or should be fired? (some people on here seem to think he should already be gone).
I don't think he should be just yet. I think the biggest change PV needed to make was the coach. But it kind of seems like a bit of an underwhelming hire, especially considering he could have hired him last season but he decided to keep Eakins instead. I still think that was a bad move, Carlsson not withstanding. I'm willing to give him this year to see if the moves he made pay off. He seems more BM than Yzerman so far and I'm not very happy about that. But a new coach was what I really wanted this team to have, I just hope we don't go through Eakins 2.0 for another three to four years.
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10 hours ago, Aksun said:
Carlssonfortunately? We wouldn't sniff a Fantilli if Beek tried the band-ad scenario by DTS.
It doesn't have to be a band aid if we got a decent coach. Yeah we don't end up drafting Carlsson, or maybe we still do. What if we had a better season and guys took us off their no trade lists? Maybe we don't end up with an aging Killorn and Gudas and get younger guys to come instead? A lot of what ifs. We can debate this until eternity but one scenario has already played out so I guess we just roll with the punches. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy we got Carlsson though. The future will show whether or not this Plan B(eek) will work or not. But something tells me we may have gotten a new coach but the GM seems a little too familiar....
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8 hours ago, dtsdlaw said:
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.
I never thought about it that way. I know PV came onto the scene halfway through the season and we were waiting on a new coaching hire. Instead he gives Eakins another year and the guy we end up signing was available last year. Sure maybe he needed time to assess things but maybe he just really does so things really slow? What happens when the team is a contender again, will he pull the trigger or end up like what Bob did during our contender window by hesitating or not willing to spend when the time came? This really slow process is concerning.
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3 hours ago, tommer-1 said:
Eakins only coached two NHL teams. And coached the Ducks for 4 seasons.
That's in reference to BM. He only had Eakins for 3 years. PV added the 4th... unfortunately.
When do Pro Roster players report?
in Anaheim Ducks
Posted
Only that video I posted earlier. I think that video caption with Zegras and someone else is somewhere in the Anaheim area though. But you're right there's very little being reported.