Things Are Not Great For The Anaheim Ducks Right Now
Things are not good for the Anaheim Ducks right now. Fresh off their 12th straight loss after falling to the Detroit Red Wings 3-1 on Wednesday night, some of the players are finally speaking up about how hard this season has been for them.
“Hardest thing I’ve been through in my career by far.”
“Been through some tough years, but this one, having a stretch like this, I’ve never been through. It’s been really tough. I can give you every cliche in the book with the way things are going now.” – Ryan Getzlaf (via orange county register)
“I don’t know how many more we can really have, to be honest with you. We talk as players without the coaches. We talk with the coaches.” – Jake Dotchin ( via TSN)
“We’re playing too much on the outside, which makes us easy to defend, and we’re always in a defensive mode, waiting for a mistake.” –Rickard Rakell (vis TSN)
Clearly the players are sick and tired of losing. The Ducks are a team that has been pretty successful over the past decade, so going 0-8-4 in their last 12 isn’t something they are used to experiencing.
The team also lost two of their best players in Ryan Kesler and Jakob Silfverberg against Detroit. I used the term “best player” lightly for Ryan Kesler, who has really been struggling this season. I mean lets be honest, the game is trending away from Ryan Kesler. At 34-years-old and with only 4 goals and 2 assists through 44 games this season, Kesler is a guy you are going to have to make a decision on soon. Can you continue to pay a guy $6.875m per until the end of the 2022 season? It wouldn’t be in their best interest, that is for sure.
According to Cap friendly here is what a buyout would look like:
The Anaheim Ducks are not winning the Stanley Cup this year. That is just a fact. Could they get hot and go on a run? Sure. But I think they should look t0 deal off some of their older guys at the deadline and look to the future. The franchise has some good, young talent that they can certainly build around. There is some great talent atop the draft this summer, they could get a big name if this skid continues. At the same time, the team is only two points out of the Wild Card, so deciding whether or not to be buyers or sellers at the deadline is a conversation that should be happening in the Ducks front office as we speak.
I’m kind of shocked we won’t see a coaching change in Anaheim this season either. The team has lost 12 striaght. They clearly aren’t buying in anymore. I know Bob Murray has already come out saying the team won’t make a coaching move during the season and as Whit pointed out on Spittin’ Chiclets, it wouldn’t be like him to make a change mid season. But could it really hurt them any worse?
