Anaheim Ducks

What the Quant Says

232 goals, 22nd in the league, off 2.518 expected goals per 60 at even strength, 19th — the least bad number Anaheim owns.

At five-on-five it scored 154 goals against an expectation of 162.3. Eight goals of finishing lost, 27th in the league. The chances were below average and the conversion of them was worse.

Troy Terry scored 37 goals on 19.3 per cent shooting, against 52 in his previous 204 career games. Trevor Zegras had 23 goals and 38 assists at 20. Adam Henrique scored 19 in 58 games, Isac Lundeström 16 on 83 shots, and Derek Grant 15 at a median shot distance of 17 feet.

Cam Fowler had 33 assists from the blue line and Jamie Drysdale 28, which is 61 of the club's assists from two defencemen — and one of them was nineteen.

Rickard Rakell and Sonny Milano are gone, and Zegras played most of his good minutes with them. With Rakell he took 56.7 per cent of the expected goals across 954 attempts; apart from Rakell, 48.1.

Ryan Strome arrives with 21 goals and 54 points from a season in which his ice beat its expected goals by thirteen and a half, Frank Vatrano with 18 goals and 10.34 shots per 60, the 91st percentile, and John Klingberg with 41 assists.

What the Scout Says

Zegras is the reason to watch. He carries the puck through the neutral zone rather than chipping it in, and he holds it a beat longer than the play wants — the same instinct produces the seam pass and the turnover at his own blue line, and at 21 nobody has yet asked him to tell them apart.

Terry is the opposite kind of player and the more finished one. He is not fast; he is early, and the separation comes from where he chooses to be rather than from how quickly he gets there. He takes almost every shot from the middle of the ice off a soft release, which is why the goals arrive and why nobody can promise 37 again.

Adam Henrique is the third scorer and the most conventional: he stands where the puck is going to be, he has shot 14 per cent or better for six straight seasons, and he does it while starting shifts in his own end.

Frank Vatrano shoots more often than almost anybody in the league and does it from outside. He will not be the man standing in the blue paint when a goal is needed. Maxime Comtois will — 117 penalty minutes in 146 games is a man who plays angry on purpose — but he never wins a puck and frequently loses one, and that combination is what a coach means when he says a player is not making good decisions.

What the Quant Says

271 goals against, 23rd, off 2.733 expected goals against per 60 at even strength, 25th in the league.

At five-on-five it conceded 186 against an expectation of 175.5, so the goaltending lost ten and a half goals on top of a chance rate that was already in the bottom third.

The blue line that produced those numbers no longer exists. Hampus Lindholm and Josh Manson were both sold in March, and both were the better half of the pairing they left behind. Jamie Drysdale beside Lindholm took 49.5 per cent of the expected goals across 1,681 attempts; apart from him, across 876, he took 44.8. Cam Fowler with Josh Manson took 52.8 per cent; apart from Manson, 48.5.

What is left is Fowler at 30, Kevin Shattenkirk at 33, Drysdale at 20 and Simon Benoit at 24, plus John Klingberg, Dmitry Kulikov, Urho Vaakanainen, Nathan Beaulieu and Colton White.

Shattenkirk played all 82 games at 21:25 and took 46.6 per cent of the expected goals, the 25th percentile. Across his six most-used partnerships, his own share in the minutes away from that partner came out between 45.0 and 47.3 per cent every time.

Klingberg was minus-28 in Dallas with 2.81 blocks per 60, the 9th percentile among defencemen. Kulikov took 53.4 per cent of the expected goals in Minnesota, the 78th percentile, and is the only defenceman added who improves the suppression.

What the Scout Says

Drysdale is the whole story and the concern is not the talent. He defends with feet and stick, and when that fails there is no second method: he does not block shots and he does not finish checks, and the partner who was hiding the difference is in Boston.

Fowler is the outlet pass and always has been — 285 career assists against 81 goals is the record of a man who moves the puck rather than shoots it — and he has never been the man who clears his own crease. On this roster he is also the only defenceman who can play 24 minutes without being hunted, which is why he will play them again.

Shattenkirk still walks the line and finds a lane, and the hands have not gone. What has gone is the skating, and a forechecker sees it before the passing ever gets a chance. Klingberg is the same problem with more skill attached: there is no part of his game that involves winning a puck by taking it, and he holds it to make something happen and a share of the time the something is a turnover at his own blue line.

Simon Benoit is the counterweight and the surprise. Undrafted, 6-4, and only a handful of defencemen in the league finish more checks — and he out-shared the 816-game veteran he was paired with. Kulikov is the professional: he is not moved out of the front of his own net and he does not need sheltering.

What the Quant Says

Anaheim's goaltending came in 10.5 goals worse than the chances it faced, 21st in the league.

John Gibson went 18-26-11 with a .9039 and a 3.19 in 56 games, facing 1,789 shots — 32 a night. It is his third consecutive season at .904 or worse, after a .9257 in 2017-18 and a .9168 in 2018-19. His career line across 378 games is a .9146.

Anthony Stolarz went 12-8-3 with a .9172 and a 2.67 in 28 games, with 3 shutouts, facing 809 shots. He was thirteen points of save percentage better than the starter behind the same defence in the same season. 809 shots is not a full sample and a backup takes the kinder half of a schedule, and it is the only comparison available that holds the club constant.

Lukas Dostal played 4 games at 21.

The crease was the twenty-first-worst thing about a twenty-third-place club, which is the most temperate sentence on this page and probably the truest. Anaheim's goaltending problem is that it is paying a starter through 2027 whose last average season was 2019, on a club that will not have an average defence before 2025.

What the Scout Says

Gibson plays deep in his crease and square to the puck and he does not chase it — a positional goaltender rather than an athletic one, which is what carried him through eight seasons of mostly bad hockey. The rebound control is the flaw and it always has been, and on a club whose defence does not clear its own crease the weakness and the situation compound each other.

What is genuinely hard to read is whether the technique has gone or the situation has taken it. The last time he played behind an average defence was 2018, and nobody watching can separate those two things either.

Stolarz is the opposite build and the opposite method: 6-6 and 248, and he takes away the bottom of the net by standing up in it. There is very little scrambling and not much lateral quickness, and the puckhandling is a real cost on a club whose defencemen are already under pressure on retrievals. He has never played 30 games in a season, and 28 is probably the number he should play.

What the Quant Says

31st in the league at 4.975 expected goals per 60, over 4:35 a night. Second-worst in hockey at creating a chance with the extra man.

Trevor Zegras scored 9 power-play goals at 20, Troy Terry 8, Cam Fowler 6, Adam Henrique 6, Derek Grant 2, Kevin Shattenkirk 1 and Jakob Silfverberg 1. Isac Lundeström, Sam Carrick, Jamie Drysdale and Maxime Comtois scored none.

43 per cent of Cam Fowler's points came on the power play, the 94th percentile among defencemen, and 40 per cent of Kevin Shattenkirk's, the 92nd. Both are genuine power-play quarterbacks and the unit was still 31st, which locates the problem somewhere other than the point.

John Klingberg arrives having taken 2:50 a night of it in Dallas — the 90th percentile — with 43 per cent of his 47 points scored on it. He is the single most direct answer to the single worst number on this page. Ryan Strome scored 5 power-play goals with the Rangers and Frank Vatrano 1.

Kevin Shattenkirk has 41 career power-play goals in 816 games, the most on the roster, and Cam Fowler 32 in 811.

What the Scout Says

Two quarterbacks who both belong on a power play, on the second-worst power play in hockey at creating a chance.

Fowler runs it from the blue line and holds the puck until a forechecker commits. Shattenkirk walks the line and finds a lane rather than firing into shins. Neither is the problem, which means the problem is in front of them, and Anaheim spent the summer addressing it.

Klingberg is the reason a power play has a shape — his point shot is a pass that happens to be aimed at the net — and he is the single most direct answer to the single worst number this club owns. Zegras is the other half of it: holding the puck a beat longer than the play wants is a flaw at five-on-five and the entire job description on a man advantage.

What is still missing is somebody to stand in front. Derek Grant is the only forward here who lives there, and he is a fourth-line centre who took 29 seconds a night of it.

What the Quant Says

29th in the league at 7.582 expected goals against per 60, over 4:32 a night. Ordinary volume, near-worst results.

Derek Grant killed 2:25 a night, the 98th percentile among the league's forwards, Jakob Silfverberg 2:10, the 96th, and Isac Lundeström 1:54, the 89th — with four shorthanded goals. That is a genuinely good group of penalty killers on a genuinely bad penalty kill.

Cam Fowler killed 2:51 a night, the 93rd percentile among defencemen, and Kevin Shattenkirk 2:13. Both are puck-movers rather than shot-blockers, and neither is who a club would choose for the job.

Josh Manson is in Colorado and Hampus Lindholm in Boston, which removes the two defencemen best equipped for it. Dmitry Kulikov arrives with 4.25 blocks per 60 and 494 penalty minutes in 805 games, and Simon Benoit hits at 13.50 per 60, the 98th percentile among defencemen — the raw material for a harder kill exists on the roster for the first time in three years.

Jamie Drysdale killed 0:02 a night, the 0th percentile. Whatever this club is building, it is not building it there yet.

What the Scout Says

Grant, Silfverberg and Lundeström are the forward group and all three are good at it. Grant fills a lane and finishes a check when one comes to him. Silfverberg reads a play before it develops and strips pucks in the neutral zone, which is the part of the game a decline in hands does not take away. Lundeström is trusted there, dangerous there — four of his 16 goals came shorthanded — and gives away almost nothing in return.

The defence is where it falls apart. Fowler and Shattenkirk are both puck-movers rather than shot-blockers, and neither is who a club would choose for the job. Manson is in Colorado.

Benoit and Kulikov are the first honest answer to that in three years: one hits at a rate almost nobody at the position matches, the other defends with body and stick in equal measure and blocks. Whether the staff trusts a 24-year-old third-pair defenceman there is the thing to watch.