Anaheim Ducks 2023-24 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings

Publish date: 2024-09-06

By Shayna Goldman, Dom Luszczyszyn and Sean Gentille

With an exciting young core supplemented by seemingly capable veterans signed during free agency, it felt like the Anaheim Ducks were primed for a step forward last season. At least that’s what many expected last September.

We know what happened next: The worst defensive season in our collective lifetime left the Ducks looking like a hopeless minor league club that was out of their depths on most nights.

What now?

No one is expecting a big leap this time around — it’s clear this is going to be a long process — but the Ducks should be much improved over last season. This year’s version has added more exciting kids and more capable veterans to the mix, plus a brand new coach. That should be enough to climb out of dead last; anything more might have to wait.

The projection

It’s hard to think of a more disappointing team than last year’s Ducks. But that wretched season has drastically lowered expectations to the point that Anaheim could surprise this year. That probably doesn’t mean “surprise with a playoff spot” — that’s projected to only happen one percent of the time. It could mean the climb that many expected last season is back on the menu though.

Last season Anaheim was projected to be an 80-point team. The Model isn’t keen on that happening this season — it gives it a 22 percent chance — but one big model blindspot is coaching. A new coach can change everything, especially for a bottom-feeder like the Ducks, and a defensive cleanup in that regard would go a long way. We don’t know what Greg Cronin is capable of as a first-time NHL head coach, but it can’t be worse than what Dallas Eakins delivered last season. The Model expects some positive regression there, but likely not high enough to match a potential new coach bump.

Add some tantalizing rookies to the mix, plus some progression from the young core, and this already optimistic projection may even be underselling what the Ducks can do this year.

But even if The Model is spot on, another lottery finish isn’t a bad thing for Anaheim. That’s another potential franchise-level talent to be added to the league’s best pipeline. Either way, it’s going to be an exciting season in Anaheim.

Percentiles with the bar graphs are based on each player’s Offensive, Defensive and Net Rating relative to their time-on-ice slot, i.e. the first forward is compared to other first forwards only.

The strengths

The exciting core that showed promise after the 2021-22 season is still in place in Anaheim. Even after last year’s setbacks, there’s still some potential between roster players and incoming prospects. It’s just hard to consider many of them strengths — not by our definition relative to an average lineup.

Looking at the top six, Mason McTavish isn’t technically a bright spot, but we’ll throw Anaheim a bone here because of his offensive upside. He quietly finished third in scoring among rookies with 43 points over an 80-game season. If he can push that forward — we expect a jump to 52 points — it should be a difference-maker in Anaheim. As it stands, he grades out well offensively as a team’s fifth forward and he has the upside to push higher than that as the third pick of the 2021 draft. But defensively there is a lot of work to do.

McTavish isn’t the only top-three pick present; there’s also Leo Carlsson who was drafted second just a couple of months ago. If he can prove past a nine-game audition he belongs at the NHL level, there’s a space in the lineup for him. Even if he falters and has to be sent to the AHL, it’ll provide benefits in the long run for this building team.

On defense, Olen Zellweger has a wide-open lane to make the team if he can seize the opportunity in training camp. Pavel Mintyukov too, either or. The Ducks’ future blue line looks very promising and that potential may start to be realized as soon as this season with some exciting prospects on the come-up. Newcomer Radko Gudas can help babysit, adding some stability in the form of a burly veteran presence with big defensive upside. That’ll be sorely needed for a young club that struggled mightily in its own end last season.

A coaching change should do this team a lot of good, too — although the bar to clear is pretty low. Cronin comes in with the tall task of trying to improve a lackluster offense and stabilize a chaotic, defensive mess. There’s no guarantee here, but it seems to be a step in the right direction.

If the coaching staff manages to take that defense up a couple of notches, that should help back in goal, too. The Ducks aren’t working with peak John Gibson anymore, but he’s still managed to show glimpses. The problem is it’s hard to maintain that level when the team is collapsing around him. If there’s true change in front of the net, maybe he can take his game up a level as well. It’s been a long time (five seasons!) since Gibson had a positive impact on goals saved above expected, but The Model does have a long memory when it comes to goaltenders. Gibson’s last good season coincides with the last time he played under a coach that wasn’t Dallas Eakins and it’s probably not a complete coincidence that the goalie who was among the league’s very best for four straight seasons suddenly looked below average under the former Ducks coach.

If Devan Dubnyk’s career before and after Eakins is any indication, there’s still hope for Gibson to get his game back on track. That he managed to allow only 2.3 goals above expected amid last season’s catastrophic defensive “structure” is nothing short of miraculous.

The weaknesses

A team’s potential is a strength once it’s realized. Until then it’s unproven, and in Anaheim’s case, a weakness of the team. The Ducks have a lot of players ready to push forward — they’re just not there yet and it’s one of the reasons Anaheim is expected to have such a poor season.

Put Troy Terry on a contender and he’s a major strength of that team. The winger proved that his 2021-22 breakout season wasn’t a fluke last year. Terry shooting 19.3 percent (and netting 37 goals) may not have been sustainable, but his primary scoring didn’t take a hit — it just balanced out on the shooting and passing to prove he’s a dual threat.

The 26-year-old is Anaheim’s most productive player between his scoring and two-way impact. Somehow, the Ducks were only outscored by one with Terry on the ice last season at five-on-five and he was a revelation relative to his weak teammates. That’s a key reason he leads the way with a plus-10 Net Rating, a mark that would be fantastic as a complementary star.

As a team’s best forward though? Not so much. Not unless he takes a big step forward — or one of Anaheim’s burgeoning young stars takes the mantle. That’s easier said than done though as they have a large hill to climb to be on par with an average team’s best forward.

Zegras is the standout name, but he has to prove he’s more than just a complementary player himself by picking up his two-way game. If he can manage that, and the team can be headlined by two super productive forwards between him and Terry, it should have a positive effect down the lineup.

GO DEEPER

Ducks' big question: Can Trevor Zegras turn into a franchise player?

But if Zegras proves he can’t fill the void at the top of the Ducks’ lineup, management will have to figure out who else can. Maybe McTavish or Carlsson can step up — they, too, are top draft picks who have the ceilings to become difference-makers on a contending team. But at a certain point, the Ducks should know who has the upside to be their true No. 1 forward and the cornerstone to build around.

Some teams can swing not having a true No. 1 who stacks up to a contender, just look at Seattle. But the Kraken, at least, have four balanced lines to make up for that. The Ducks absolutely do not.

Recent free-agent expenditures have attempted to solve that, but Ryan Strome was an utter disaster in his first year with the Ducks while Frank Vatrano was in way over his head. Alex Killorn has championship pedigree and may help, but his age is a bit concerning. It’s unlikely he’s still a 60-point player in Anaheim as the support around him isn’t even close to comparable to what he had in Tampa Bay. There’s a difference between complementing a top six and leading it. Killorn, like Adam Henrique, is better suited for the former but is being positioned for the latter.

What hurts the Ducks even more is that they have the same exact problem on the blue line. Cam Fowler is the team’s No. 1 until someone else proves capable of absorbing that role. He’d be perfectly fine in a second-pair role, but the team needs him to play above his depths, which will affect the rest of the blue line.

Same goes for Jamie Drysdale, who has been thrown into Anaheim’s fire early into his career and has struggled to extinguish it. A huge leap is possible and we expect him to look closer to a top-four defenseman after missing last season. His return is crucial if he progresses, but for now, having him as the team’s No. 2 behind Fowler is dicey.

A lot rides on Drysdale living up to his draft pedigree. It’s sink-or-swim for the 2021 No. 6 pick because the top role is not one that can reasonably be filled by anyone else. Just one experienced defender other than Fowler has a positive rating on this team and that’s Gudas, who isn’t top-pair caliber and doesn’t have the offensive game to match. Drysdale has the potential to change that, but until then, this is the situation the team is stuck with.

Unless the coaches can tactically make up for the roster weaknesses on the blue line, there’s a chance the Ducks have another terrible season defensively. So while there are changes to last year’s blue line — Drysdale’s return, Zellweger’s graduation and additions Gudas, Hagg and Lyubushkin — it’s still not the most inspiring group. This is a lot to ask of a coaching staff with a group that doesn’t need a couple tweaks, but a complete renovation systematically considering its historic lows last year, both at even strength and on the penalty kill.

The Ducks allowed a rate of 4.09 goals against per game which was the worst of any team since the 1995-96 Sharks, and allowed the highest rate of shots and expected goal against (both at five-on-five and in all situations) since that data was tracked in 2007-08.

Almost every element of their defensive game was a failure — from their putrid 10.4 percent zone entry denial rate and the number of rush shots conceded, to their failures to break out with the puck and shift back to offense. So it’s no surprise that a team so awful in their own zone suffered through a bunch of blowout losses.

The goaltending couldn’t withstand the team bleeding shots once again, and crumbled. The offense, despite the skill at the top of the lineup, couldn’t generate much of anything, either. Anaheim fell so flat, they were one of the worst teams in shot, scoring chance and goal generation at five-on-five. Special teams didn’t make matters any better, on either end of the ice.

Whether or not that defense improves may decide how the rest of the team fares. Will the offense be able to overcome a horrible defense this year if nothing changes? Probably not. Will the goaltending be able to? Considering just how much the Ducks’ awful defense has dragged down Gibson’s play these last four years, that seems unlikely, too. And if Gibson can’t rebound, it’ll only lessen a potential trade return should Anaheim try to move him.

That would lead to the Ducks’ rebuild stalling for another year. They can be a fun team — even if that means they’re a little chaotic — but that starts with bearing some responsibility without the puck.

The wild card

Can Olen Zellweger or Pavel Mintyukov jump-start improvement from the back end?

In August, the Ducks topped Corey Pronman’s pipeline rankings, up from No. 4 in 2022 thanks in part to the addition of No. 2 pick Leo Carlsson. Not to be missed, though, is the presence of Zellweger (No. 5 in the organization) and Mintyukov (No. 6) slightly behind players like Carlsson, Zegras and MacTavish.

Both are defensemen. Both are either ready for NHL minutes or quite close to it. And both, if they begin to scratch their potential, will be sorely needed ASAP. Anaheim was the worst defensive team in the league last season by virtually every metric and is tracking to be similarly putrid in 2023-24. There’s a good chance one or both of the highly touted defenders can change that this season while adding real value to what was the league’s No. 31 power play.

Zellweger was named the CHL’s defenseman of the year after putting up 109 points in 69 WHL games. He’s 5-foot-9, but still plays against top competition and — as the point total suggests — has a serious set of skills with the puck. That remarkable production is part of the reason he’s projected to carry a plus-1 Net Rating as a rookie. He’s likely to make the Ducks better, even if his defensive contributions top out at “not terrible,” and make sense on the left side of Anaheim’s third pair behind Cam Fowler and Robert Hagg.

Pronman called Mintyukov the best defenseman in the OHL and projects him as an eventual top-four contributor. He’s bigger than Zellweger, at 6-foot-1, with a similar toolbox and less defensive impact. He also doesn’t have a 100-point season on his resume, but hey, not many defensemen (outside of Zellweger) can claim one. Like Zellweger, he’s a left shot. Unless one of Fowler or Hagg is injured, he’s the likelier of the two prospects to start the season with Anaheim’s AHL affiliate in San Diego.

The best case

That big leap everyone expected last season? It was one year early. Zegras, Terry, McTavish and Carlsson look like an elite forward core for years to come; some combo of Zellweger, Mintyukov and Drysdale jell on the back end; and John Gibson returns to form as an elite goalie. It’s not a playoff season, but it’s close.

The worst case

The Ducks improve enough to land outside the lottery, but not much more. Worse is that their young ducklings don’t look the part of future franchise players, casting doubt on the rebuild.

The bottom line

The Ducks’ potential, both on the NHL roster and slightly outside it, is obvious, but there are too many outstanding questions and unfinished products to fully buy in at the moment. Enthusiasm is understandable. Optimism is, too. And ultimately, expecting every player to maximize their potential isn’t realistic — but this season, a few more need to show real progress, especially after the disaster of 2022-23.

Come May, if two young forwards and one young defenseman look like true core members, the season will have been a success. Continued across-the-board uncertainty, though, will also bring failure.