Three games in the NHL season, Hope and Optimism Reign and each team estimates that this is a competitor of the Stanley Cup. Even the reconditioned Ducks AnaheimIncluding the last victory in the playoff series occurred less than four months after Barack Obama left the White House, has reasons to dream.
“You must have this mentality that it is a team of playoffs,” said the defender Cam FowlerOne of the two players on the list of Ducks who also played in this 2017 eliminatory team. “If someone is here and does not feel that we can do it, I would be very surprised.”
But after six consecutive seasons of loss (the Ducks qualify a large part of this period as “years of reconstruction”), even Fowler, 32, recognizes that the mentality – as well as the new brilliant uniforms of the Ducks and the RESTYLED logo – will not be sufficient to change the fortune of the team. He will also need victories.
“There are few things you can do or say,” he said. “You must introduce yourself and prove it during the season. It has not (our) way in recent years, but it does not mean that this year must be like this.”
Fans who have been blowing for a long time were certainly presented themselves on Wednesday, with a crowd reserved for the standing room of 17,245 Honda Center packaging for the home opening match. And they left happy after a 5-4 victory in overtime against Utah gave the team two victories in its first three games for the first time since 2021.
This team has lost its next six consequences and finished seventh in the Pacific division at eight teams. Whether this season reflects that the one or turns out to be the season, the Ducks finally race in a berth in playoffs will be determined by a harvest of young players, talented but ultimately not proven. This is why hope and optimism should be adopted with caution at best.
Cam Fowler, on the left, and Tristan Luneau of the Ducks are fighting for the washer with Logan Cooley from Utah.
(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)
The Ducks have ranked among the first four in the NHL pipelines of athletics, which notes the best young players of each organization, during each of the last three seasons. Four players on this list are not even old enough to buy a beer in California, including the 20 -year -old Russian defender Pavel Mintyukovwho scored two goals on Wednesday and the 19 -year -old Swedish Leo CarlssonThe choice n ° 2 of the draft last year, who marked the winner of the match 54 seconds in overtime.
“The great thing all year round will be the speed with which we can bring young people to obtain the maturity of their game,” said coach Greg Cronin, who is starting his second season behind the bench. “Your players win matches, right?” Your talent wins.
“When you have young children, this talent has not matured. Just in terms of rehearsal, a veteran who played five years in the league, let's just say that they have 10,000 repetitions in a certain game. A young child enters, he has 100 repetitions. He must cross the process.”
And for Cronin, who is as much a teacher as him, this process will require unlimited patience and tolerance to errors.
“A guy makes a lot of mistakes and if you get on the player, then he loses his confidence,” he said. “These young children, we know they will make mistakes. What can we do to make them pass for mistakes so that they can continue to grow as players and contribute? ”
The young players are also cheaper and the Ducks, after eliminating the veterans at high prices, Corey Perry, Ryan Getzlaf, Jakob Silfverberg, Hampus Lindholm and others, have eight players in less than a million dollars this season. This leaves the overall allocation of the team to $ 68.3 million, the second lower in the NHL and only $ 3.2 million on the NHL wage ceiling floor, according to Puckpedia.com.
Pavel Mintyukov celebrates his goal with Alex Killorn during the third period.
(Kyusung Gong / Associated Press)
The Ducks wage bill has been placed in the last four NHL for each of the last four seasons and the owners, the technological billionaire Henry Samueli and his wife, Susan, have largely obtained what they paid during the prolonged reconstruction of the team, the Ducks ending the last or the next rank of the division. (To be fair, the Ducks finished fourth in the NHL to spend the 2020-21 season at the short duration;
The Samuelis did not respond to requests, made through a team spokesperson, to share their ideas to change the ducks. However, the modest salary of the team leaves the director general Pat Verbeek with nearly $ 20 million in ceiling space to maneuver if young people ripen faster than expected, transforming the optimism of the current fall into legitimate hope next spring.
The players, if not the fans, tire of waiting for this to happen.
“Looking towards the future is a little finished,” said winger Troy Terry, who is in his eighth season with the Ducks and has not yet appeared in an eliminatory match. “We now have a team to run to make the playoffs. It's just a kind of mentality that we all try to have.”
“The last five or six years have certainly been the start of our reconstruction,” added Fowler. “We are sort of getting out of this. Now, it's up to us to grow up as a team and show that we have built this thing in the right way. ”
As part of the pre-match festivities, Emma Melin de Placentia was presented as on the 21stst Duck, an honor that goes to a fan who embodies “great perseverance, character, courage, inspiration or who makes important contributions to our community”.
Melin, 9, was chosen for her awareness of serious food allergies, which she has treated since her first episode at the age of nine days. Since then, she has lived five almost fatal experiences but has not stopped working to educate others.
