Three games into the NHL season, hope and optimism reign and every team believes it is a Stanley Cup contender. Even the repackaged Anaheim Ducks, whose last playoff win came less than four months after Barack Obama left the White House, have reason to dream.
“You have to have that mentality, that this a playoff team,” said defenseman Cam Fowler, one of two players on the Ducks’ roster who also played on that 2017 playoff team. “If anyone’s in here and doesn’t feel that we can do that, I’d be very surprised.”
But after six straight losing seasons (the Ducks refer to much of that period as “rebuilding years”), even Fowler, 32, acknowledges that mentality — as well as the Ducks’ new bright-orange uniforms and restyled logo — won’t be enough to change the team’s fortunes. It is going to need some wins too.
“There’s only so much that you can do or say,” he said. “You have to show up and prove it during the season. It hasn’t gone [our] way the last few years but that doesn’t mean that this year has to be that way.”
The team’s long-suffering fans certainly showed up Wednesday, with a standing-room-only crowd of 17,245 packing Honda Center for the home opener. And they left happy after a 5-4 overtime win over Utah gave the team two wins in its first three games for the first time since 2021.
That team lost its next six in a row and finished seventh in the eight-team Pacific Division. Whether this season mirrors that one or proves to be the season the Ducks finally make a run at a playoff berth will be determined by a crop of young, talented but ultimately unproven players. Which is why the hope and optimism should be embraced cautiously at best.
The Ducks have ranked in the top four of the Athletic’s NHL Pipeline rankings, which grades the best young players in each organization, in each of the last three seasons. Four players on this roster aren’t even old enough to buy a beer in California, among them 20-year-old Russian defenseman Pavel Mintyukov, who had two goals Wednesday, and 19-year-old Swede Leo Carlsson, the No. 2 pick in the draft last year, who scored the game-winner 54 seconds into overtime.
“The big thing all year is going to be how quickly we can get the young guys to get the maturity to their game,” said coach Greg Cronin, who is entering his second season behind the bench. “Your players win games, right? Your talent wins.
“When you have young kids, that talent hasn’t matured. Just in terms of repetition, a veteran that’s played five years in the league, let’s just say they’ve got 10,000 reps in a certain play. A young kid comes in, he’s got 100 reps. There’s a huge difference and you can’t manufacture, you know, 9,000 reps for the young kid. He has to go through the process.”
And for Cronin, who is as much a teacher as he is a coach, that process will require limitless patience and a tolerance for mistakes.
“A guy makes a bunch of mistakes and if you get on the player, then he loses his confidence,” he said. “These young kids, we know they’re going to make mistakes. What can we do to get them through the mistakes so they can continue to grow as players and be contributing?”
Young players also are cheaper and the Ducks, after clearing out high-priced veterans Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Jakob Silfverberg, Hampus Lindholm and others, have eight players making less than $1 million this season. That leaves the team’s overall cap allocation at $68.3 million, second lowest in the NHL and just $3.2 million over the NHL’s salary cap floor, according to Puckpedia.com.
The Ducks’ payroll has ranked in the bottom four of the NHL for each of the last four seasons and the owners, tech billionaire Henry Samueli and his wife, Susan, largely have gotten what they’ve paid for during the team’s extended rebuilding, with the Ducks finishing last or next to last in the division each season. (To be fair, the Ducks were fourth in the NHL in spending in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season; they still finished in the division cellar.)
The Samuelis did not respond to requests, made through a team spokesman, to share their ideas for turning the Ducks around. However the team’s modest payroll leaves general manager Pat Verbeek with nearly $20 million in cap space to maneuver should the youngsters mature faster than expected, turning the current fall optimism into legitimate hope by next spring.
The players, if the not the fans, are growing tired of waiting for that to happen.
“Looking to the future is kind of over,” said winger Troy Terry, who is in his eighth season with the Ducks and has yet to appear in a playoff game. “We have a team now to make a run at making the playoffs. That’s just kind of the mindset we are all trying to have.”
“The last five or six years was definitely the start of our rebuild,” Fowler added. “We’re kind of on our way out of that. Now it’s up to us to grow as a team and show we built this thing the right way.”
As part of the pregame festivities, Placentia’s Emma Melin was introduced as the 21st Duck, an honor that goes to a fan who embodies “great perseverance, character, courage, inspiration or who is making significant contributions to our community.”
Melin, 9, was chosen for her work raising awareness about severe food allergies, something she has dealt with since her first episode when she was nine days old. Since then, she’s had five near-fatal experiences but has not stopped working to educate others.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
