A new season brings new hope for every franchise. For Anaheim, that hope is centered on a desire to see tangible improvement from the team that has had a top 10 pick in 6 consecutive drafts. What exactly do the Ducks need to improve on, though? I singled out 5 areas that could use some work based on recent history:
Shot Generation
The Ducks have been a bottom 6 team in shots on goal per game every season since 2017-18. Anaheim’s overall shot disparity has been woeful for many years now. Last season, they reduced the number of shots allowed per game by 6.6, which is pretty impressive. The issue is that they allowed an absurd 39.1 shots per game in 2022-23, so that improvement only brought them to 6th worst in the league with 32.5 in 2023-24. While that was a notable step forward, they also put the puck on net less than that dreadful 2022-23 season. Last year, they averaged 26.8 shots per game, which was 4th worst in the league. It’s not a surprise that the Ducks finished 3rd to last in goals for.
One part of the solution is having a coaching staff that emphasizes putting pucks on net. When a team loses as much as the Ducks have in recent seasons, it puts a natural hesitation in the backs of players’ minds. Each mistake or missed opportunity feels so much heavier than it actually is. If coaches make it a point of shooting the puck more, it takes away some of the thinking that can paralyze players in key moments. It’s important to mention that this doesn’t mean players should just shoot from anywhere at any time. It’s more about not passing up on any quality opportunities that you earn. It might be tempting to make that extra pass for a seemingly better chance, but it’s often a better play to get the puck to the net and see what happens.
Another key aspect of generating shots is having players who are willing to shoot the puck. Part of that is simply having confidence in your own ability and believing that if you shoot the puck, good things will happen. Last season, Frank Vatrano led the Ducks with 272 shots on goal in 82 games (3.3 shots on goal per game). The next closest player on the team was Troy Terry with 172 shots in 76 games (2.3 shots on goal per game). Other than those 2, only Trevor Zegras, Alex Killorn (2.3), and Mason McTavish (2.0) averaged 2+ shots per game (Leo Carlsson averaged just under 2 per game). One major addition to this group will be Cutter Gauthier, who is known for his ability and propensity to shoot the puck. In his first preseason game, he put up 12 shots on goal, and he will be constantly fed great passes by Leo Carlsson this season. Even though he’s a rookie, Gauthier seems ready and willing to shoot the puck, which will be much appreciated on this Ducks team.
I believe that Anaheim will put more shots on goal this year. Based on some comments early in training camp, it does seem like Greg Cronin and the rest of the coaching staff are trying to get the team to shoot more. For the most part, it did come through in the preseason, but the regular season will be a different challenge. Improved roster health will also go a long way in generating more shots. Injuries, especially to key forwards, force some players to move up in the lineup to positions they aren’t ready for and to play with teammates they don’t have as much chemistry with. A stable, consistent lineup will improve cohesion and comfort throughout the roster. Maybe it’s just blind hope, but I think we will see a positive step in this area for Anaheim this season.
Faceoffs
Anaheim has also been a bottom 6 team in faceoff percentage in each of the last 2 seasons. Last year, the Ducks finished with a pathetic 46.7% faceoff win percentage (NHL average is 50%), and it seems likely to get worse. There were 8 Ducks who took at least 100 faceoffs last season, and 3 of them finished above 50%. That might not seem too bad at first glance, but when you realize that 2 of those 3 players (Adam Henrique and Sam Carrick) were dealt at the trade deadline last year, it doesn’t paint a good picture for this season, especially since the Ducks did not add any centers over the offseason.
On the current roster, only Mason McTavish was respectable in the faceoff dot last season at 51.7%. Here is how the other 4 main faceoff men on the current roster fared last season:
- Ryan Strome: 46.2%
- Isac Lundestrom: 44.0%
- Trevor Zegras: 38.1%
- Leo Carlsson: 34.8%
It’s not a stretch to say this could be the worst faceoff team in the league this season if those numbers don’t improve substantially. You might be wondering how much faceoffs actually matter in the grand scheme of things. At even strength, it’s hard to say how much of an impact they have (although you would still rather win a draw than lose it). However, I wrote about when faceoffs seem to be most important: special teams. Gaining possession after a defensive zone draw on the penalty kill goes a long way toward killing the clock and reducing the power play’s ability to generate scoring chances. Faceoffs are also critical in situations like 4-on-4 and 3-on-3 because it’s much easier to hold onto the puck. It’s even becoming more common to have a player out there just to take the faceoff and get off the ice, like you see the Utah Hockey Club execute here in a preseason game:
I do not believe this Ducks team is built to be a good faceoff team at all. The good news is that winning faceoffs is a skill that improves with time, practice, and experience. Anaheim has so many young centers that it’s not exactly a surprise that they aren’t a good faceoff team, especially when you are talking about Leo Carlsson. He was so poor at faceoffs last season that it might actually be difficult for him to be worse. He will get better eventually, but in the mean time, it might be difficult to put him out there for key draws. Instead, McTavish will likely be the go-to guy in that regard. I do hope that the coaching staff is putting an emphasis on practicing draws when possible, because it is definitely one of the weakest aspects of the Ducks’ game.
Minor Penalties
The Ducks have been a highly penalized team for a long time, but last year, they took it to another level. Anaheim was shorthanded a league-leading 330 times, which is more than 4 times per game. To put that in perspective, that was 39 times more than the next closest team (or about 0.5 more times per game). The gap between the Ducks and the 2nd most shorthanded team was the same as the gap between the 2nd most shorthanded team and the 12th most shorthanded team. Nobody took minor penalties like the Ducks took minor penalties.
The difficulty in addressing an issue like this is that coaching can only do so much. In a recent broadcast, color analyst Brian Hayward mentioned that Pat Verbeek brought in a referee as a consultant during training camp. While I do appreciate this step, I’m not sure if it will help the veteran players, because they should know what is and isn’t allowed by this point. According to Natural Stat Trick, Ducks astonishingly held 3 of the top 4 spots in minor penalties taken. Frank Vatrano was 1st with 40, Radko Gudas was tied for 2nd with 38, and Mason McTavish was 4th with 36. Gudas and McTavish also missed games last season, meaning their numbers would be even higher had they been healthy. Ryan Strome (28) and Alex Killorn (22) were also regulars in the penalty box. Having 5 key players with penalty issues is a difficult problem to navigate because they have to be on the ice quite a bit, but there is a decent chance they could hurt the team by being out there. And the more often a team goes on the penalty kill, the more tired the penalty killers will be. The Ducks were the only team last season to surpass an average of 10% of each game on the penalty kill (6:17 time shorthanded per game).
Because the Ducks are returning most of the biggest perpetrators from last season, I am skeptical if they will be able to rectify this problem. The players need to focus on playing hard and aggressive without taking penalties. It’s part mental discipline and part effort. If you continue to move your feet, you won’t need to reach or grab or slash to play defense or take the puck away from an opponent. It seems simple, but many Duck players have trouble with that important detail. Cutting down on minor penalties would go a long way in making the Ducks more competitive.
Penalty Kill
Not only did the Ducks take an obscene number of penalties, but they also did a very poor job of killing them off. In part due to sheer volume of shorthanded opportunities and also due to ineptitude, Anaheim impressively gave up 1.11 power play goals per game last season, by far the worst in the NHL (Minnesota was 2nd to last at 0.82). In terms of penalty kill percentage, Anaheim was 2nd to last at 72.4%. No matter how you slice it, the Ducks’ penalty kill was awful and it was a major reason they were not a good team.
Anaheim has to figure out the best personnel to deploy on the penalty kill. Last season, all of Ilya Lyubushkin, Adam Henrique, and Sam Carrick were regular skaters when the team was a man (or two) down. Henrique and Carrick took most of the faceoffs on the penalty kill, which means Anaheim will have to trust the important responsibility to other players. All three Lyubushkin, Henrique, and Carrick were traded before the trade deadline last season, and Anaheim’s penalty kill efficiency took a hit after they left. In 21 games after those players were traded, the Ducks’ penalty kill was operating at about 64%. That is obviously unacceptable, and it means that the team has to reevaluate who gets those minutes. Brian Dumoulin should get a good chunk of those minutes, but the rest of them must be distributed to internal options.
It will be interesting to see how the Ducks spread out the minutes on the penalty kill this season. Pat Verbeek has suggested that he might want some more talented players to get some penalty kill time, and this was evidenced by Leo Carlsson getting some reps at the end of last season. The team also has to figure out who will take the majority of faceoffs on the kill. Isac Lundestrom seems like a clear candidate, but he has never been a great faceoff man. Mason McTavish is good in the dot, but he leaves a lot to be desired defensively, so the team might be hesitant to put him out there. Maybe Ryan Strome is an option? There really isn’t an obvious answer on the current roster. I don’t think the team has a great set of personnel options to choose from, but I hope to see tangible improvement in the structure of the team’s penalty kill this season.
Power Play
Out of all the areas on this list, the power play was actually the least problematic last year, relatively speaking. Yep, the Ducks only had the 8th worst power play percentage at 17.9%! It’s been a problematic area in Anaheim for quite awhile, and it has taken a toll on the team’s confidence. You can just tell by the way the players move and handle the puck on the power play that they don’t want to make mistakes. That is not how you run a successful power play. The best units move the puck quickly and with conviction, creating chaos amongst the penalty killers. A poor power play can then leak into even strength play as it can destroy whatever momentum was created when the penalty was drawn.
Other than scoring goals, the main goal of a power play unit should be to create as many quality scoring chances as possible. A good measure of power play efficiency is expected goals for per 60 minutes. It includes both quality and quantity of chances, and it is time-based, meaning it removes bias from teams that get more or fewer minutes on the power play. According to Natural Stat Trick, the Ducks generated 6.03 expected goals for per 60 minutes last season at 5-on-4, which was dead last in the league (Money Puck had the Ducks 4th to last in their own version of the stat). Part of this is certainly due to the confidence issues that I previously mentioned. Very few players on the team are willing to shoot the puck with the man advantage (Frank Vatrano seems to be the exception). The fact that they don’t move the puck quickly means the defense is able to adjust and shut down lanes. There needs to be more decisiveness when they are set up in the offensive zone.
Another part of this problem is that the Ducks simply have a hard time getting set up in the offensive zone in the first place. It starts with the team’s ability to win faceoffs. Teams typically have an advantage taking faceoffs on the power play (last year’s average faceoff win percentage on the power play was about 55%, as opposed to 50% at even strength), but the Ducks don’t see that advantage like other teams do. According to Money Puck, Anaheim won 49.23% of draws at 5-on-4, which was 4th to last in the NHL. If you lose the faceoff, then the opposing team gets a great chance to clear the puck down the ice. The power play team then has to deal with getting the puck back into the offensive zone and setting up its power play. Even though the Ducks have some skilled puck carriers like Leo Carlsson, Troy Terry, and Trevor Zegras, they seem to have difficulty figuring out how to regularly enter the offensive zone with possession of the puck.
Last season, the Ducks used both power play units evenly. One unit mainly consisted of the younger, more talented players, and the other unit was comprised of mainly veterans. Neither unit performed particularly well. The veteran unit generally attempted to shoot the puck more often, but they were, on average, of lower quality than the shots of younger unit. The issue with the younger unit was that they just didn’t shoot the puck enough as there was a lot of over-handling and over-passing. The veteran unit scored more often, and much of that credit should go directly to Frank Vatrano, who scored 13 of Anaheim’s 42 power play goals. His lethal shot was pretty much the sole reason that the Ducks weren’t dead last on the power play last season. The fact of the matter is that if both units played a similar amount of minutes, it means the coaching staff isn’t confident enough in one unit to get the job done over the other unit. And if the coaching staff isn’t confident, how can the players be confident on the ice?
There needs to be tangible improvement on the power play this season. The Ducks have enough talent where this should be a strength of the team. One reason for optimism is the addition of a new power play coach: Rich Clune. Clune, who was mainly known for being a tough guy in his playing days, took control of the AHL Toronto Marlies’ power play last season and helped turn it around. He hasn’t been a coach for very long, but it sounds like the Ducks are high on his ability to connect with the younger players and improve the power play. Rookie Cutter Gauthier will also hopefully be a boon to a one of the units. Like Vatrano, Gauthier loves to shoot the puck, so having one of him or Vatrano on the ice at all times with the man advantage should increase shot volume. One other piece of the puzzle that Anaheim has to figure out is which defensemen will play on the power play units. All of Cam Fowler, Tristan Luneau, Olen Zellweger, Pavel Mintyukov, and Jackson LaCombe are candidates. Surprisingly, it seems like LaCombe is the leading candidate to play on the current top unit. However, he has so much competition that I don’t believe the team will hesitate to swap him out if things aren’t going well early in the year. I think we will see some small improvements to the power play as the year goes on, but I would wager that it will take some time. They certainly have the talent to make it a strength, but it remains to be seen if they can put it all together.
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