Pacific division predictions
By Phil Gretzky
7. Anaheim Ducks
And now we get to the dregs of the division. The Ducks are in the midst of a rebuild so there isn’t much to say about them at this point. They have some good building blocks in place talent-wise with a first line of Adam Henrique-Trevor Zegras (who still needs to be signed as an RFA)-Troy Terry and a second line of Alex Killorn-Mason Mctavish-Ryan Strome.
It will be interesting to see how Alex Killorn – a cap casualty of Tampa Bay last season – will perform on a rebuilding Ducks team as he’s only played on stacked Lightning teams his whole career.
That being said, scoring goals isn’t the problem for this Anaheim team, it’s playing defence. They finished with the worst GA in the entire league last season with 338. Check it out – literally only three players – THREE – finished at or over the 0 mark in +/- – and none of those guys played more than 20 games for the Ducks last season.
As for their defence? They turned over four out of six blueliners so that should tell you all you need to know about them. Third-pairing rough-and-tumble blueliner Radko Gudas was signed to play on the second pairing, that’s another big tell.
As for the goaltending? Look at what I wrote about the Kraken’s goaltending and you have basically the same situation.
The Ducks should easily be able to overcome the Sharks this season, but other than that expect more rebuilding.