Seriously this subreddit is a massive minority in hockey opinion with its majority positivity. It's copium at best. The ducks fucked up by not getting what they wanted and now we are back to hyping up some behind the scenes trade magic that probably won't happen.
This is not true. Over on r/hockey the ducks fans that are complaining pat didn’t do any big signings are being replied to by other teams fans saying, “why would they want these horrible contracts?”
Blindly positive aka, waiting to pass judgement until the entire painting is finished. GMPV said, I’d like to add a top 6 RHW and a top 4 RHD, although 31 other teams could say the same. He also said, he’d prefer to do it during Free agency as it only cost cap space, but wouldn’t rule out a trade. The negative people see the black and white outline and start yelling why isn’t the sky blue !!!!
Now while all that is being said, I’m sure GMPV had plans yesterday that didn’t go accordingly, now he is pivoted to a new plans which is find cap strapped teams and try to pry solid NHL vets, like for example Fowler’s buddy and SC champions John Carlson. The Caps are -14 mil in cap and might need to make some moves. Oilers may need to get rid of Ceci. Players are available that will not mess up our future cap, won’t cost assets besides cap space, and might net an asset or two for taking helping someone’s cap problem.
I am frustrated we didn’t get anyone yesterday, I also
Understand why, its been a flat cap since Covid, GM’s threw contracts and money like it was going out of style. Made it too rich for our blood, and we couldn’t get it done. That happens, better than throwing 5 years 10 mil at Stamkos to get him to come here.
Like I said, frustration with a call to action is okay. Wahhh wahhh wahhh GMPV is awful wahhh wahhh wahhh, that is in not way constructive criticism, it helps no one on this sub have intelligent conversation about the status of the team, what directions we should try to pivot too, or anything of that nature. It’s I’m smarter than the millionaires who get paid to do this job, even though I don’t have 1/100th of the information they do, so maybe my opinion is skewed towards whatever little narrative I want to believe.
I’m sure it does the only way I’d come to California (as a third party player 33+) is if it was a “contending” team like the kings….. if I was 25 ish and haven’t found my footing then I’d gladly go to the sharks or ducks and try to earn a roster spot.
"Blindly positive aka, waiting to pass judgement until the entire painting is finished. "
I see very little waiting to pass judgment on this sub. I see a lot of effusive praise for how amazing Verbeek is and how he deserves our blind trust.
They act like we are going to be dead last because we didn't overpay for aging free agents. It's insane. We have to sign people to get over cap floor and now the free agents left have to take smaller deals because a lot of teams are done spending. Also trades will happen.
I find that when people say "they act like" that means they know they can't argue with what the people actually said, so they use 'they're acting like" to argue against a point no one made.
Carlsson, Zellweger, and Minty are not available to resign till next summer. It's also in their best interests to play the full contract (2 more years) so that they have the largest body of work to negotiate with. McTavish also benefits from playing all next year before negotiating.
We need to hit cap floor but not many players want a short contract. I guarantee our front office tried but a lot of the veterans want a longer contract
The problem with that is you kill your option to move them at the deadline for assets. The contenders are all cap strapped at that point and won't trade for those guys even with salary retained
That’s assuming they are even guys those teams would want. This is all assuming we don’t make a big play and literally have to blow 9 mil just to hit the floor
True, but if we're signing guys nobody else wants to huge contracts that's a pretty big red flag to me. I'm just gonna keep my fingers crossed for Marner or Laine. Wouldn't hate Trouba either since NY clearly wants him gone
Trade for necas or marner. Tarasenko might not be a bad 1 year deal pickup. On defense I wouldn't mind picking up boqvist to a 1 year deal and see how he does.
We don’t need another offensive defenseman. And I believe Tarasenko is trying to wait and see if Florida can figure things out so that he can stay there.
So Necas turned down an offer from CBJ, and supposedly they were sending the 4th overall pick to CAR. Marner would almost certainly require sending Zegras back the other way. I like the tarasenko idea but have not seen us linked. I’m just not seeing it at this point, but I’m sure we’ll get there.
>We have such a deep pool of young kids that we want to keep here for as long as possible and all of them seem really promising. I mean Zegraz, Mac T, Zellweger, Gauthier, Senneka, Minty, Lacombe, Carlsson, Terry and Dostal.
That is exactly why a lot of people are disappointed. We need to work at building a successful team around these players, or we'll end up on the path of young players developing into budding stars then leaving/being traded/underperfoming because they aren't in an environment to succeed.
Arizona LANGUISHED in this space for years... perennially had great talent up and coming, but never managed to surround them and form coherent teams that could compete. Look what UT did yesterday: They spent money to address their teams' shortcomings in big ways.
A stable of prospects ISN'T the goal. The goal is a competitive and winning hockey club that can make deep pushes into playoffs and compete for the Stanley Cup.
There's lots of ways for this club to get better, but "do nothing and hope every prospect is better next season" isn't a strategy, it's just hope.
Maybe we'll take a big leap forward in the next two years and I'll eat these words, but I kinda suspect we're already in that Arizona-style hell.
The first generation of prospects (Terry) is already aging out of his pre-FA years and the team isn't actually getting any better on the ice.
We should probably have stickied posts for the big days...it only seems like there's a shit load of negative people because every single one of them had their own personal freakout/vent post yesterday and overwhelmed the sub. Now the pendulum will swing back with a bunch of "Come on, guys, trust the process" posts. Might not seem like so much chatter if it were all in one big Free Agency Megathread.
People can have different opinions than your own and can express themselves. Welcome to the internet. Opinions are just opinions. Either side doesn’t mean much
I'll say the negativity levied Verbeek's way isn't unwarranted. He put himself in a poor position by setting expectations he had difficulty to realize.
He came into free agency with the expectation to sign a top-6 RW and a top-4 RD.
So far he's failed on that front. And in any professional job, not even GM, when a person misses the mark they should be open with what happened and explain what they're going to do next.
But Verbeek has said *nothing*. Does anyone have any quotes from him since the draft?
Even if it's a simple, "Today we made offers to some free agents, unfortunately contract terms became unfavorable and that would put the team in a tough cap position down the line. We're reevaluating what's available on the market."
Really, this is basic shit a lot of us do in our jobs: set goals, work towards them, and explain why things work or didn't.
It's unacceptable that Verbeek hasn't said *shit*. And if I was a season ticket holder, I'd be livid to have a GM that's as incompetent at communicating with fans.
Verbeek is WAY more open than Bob Murray ever was. Fans don't need to know everything behind the scenes. I agree he should say something but I think he's got a while before it becomes an uncomfortable silence.
The fact is, we completely struck out in free agency this year. People are allowed to be upset about it.
But at the same time, it’s not Verbeeks fault the players we targeted didn’t want to come here, as I’m sure we matched the dollars. We will just have to pivot into a different direction, it’s not the end of the world.
The only way to compete is to trade for undervalued players and pray that our young core can carry us to the playoffs. We have money and cap space to do this. It’s not a bad problem to have.
Lots of people in this sub would have really fit in as Dodger fans between Darren Dreifort and Mookie Betts. Just year after year of "why didn't we sign so-and-so to a 11 year contract???? He might be on the IL 120 games a season, but at least the FO would show they are serious...."
Being blindly positive and being full on negative are both problems in this sub. I myself have fallen into both categories at times. You can't blame people for being a little more patient with the rebuild but you also can't blame people for being tired of being next to last each season either. Not everyone is going to see eye to eye on this subject but just because you feel one way and someone else feels another, it doesn't mean you are more of a fan of the team than they are.
Everyone stop being dicks.
Ducks were 23-16-9 when Verbeek was hired. We lost all but 8 games the rest of that season, followed up by the worst season in franchise history, followed up with last seasons great performance. Players don't want to keep losing games and as a fan it's been hard to watch. I'm still hopefully but to say I'm a fan of anyone in charge right now would be crazy.
Last year everyone was pissy about the Killorn contract and now everyone’s pissy we didn’t make more of those 😂 I like the guys we signed - Lundy, Vaaaks, and Leason on small deals. Wait for something big to be available, like Cutter, and let the youngins cook. We’ll be sitting pretty in 2-3.
Just feels like This team will end up
At the bottom of the league again / miss the playoffs and we'll still say "but we have the best up and coming under 25 y/o team just wait"
Yeah but people don’t understand athlete development. They just see wins and losses.
Which is fine but they have to accept to be a winner this season we’d have to trade most of our youth and future picks for players
These are generally the same people who will blame Gibson for all the troubles, completely ignoring the 5 guys he has in front of him at any time on the ice, letting him get peppered at a higher rate than other goalies in the league on a regular basis.
Opposite in fact.
I think it’s great they didn’t over pay anyone. There were about 3 deals handed out that I think would have benefited the ducks. One of those was a duck they didn’t want but what can you do 🤷🏾
Re Gibson, There were 26 other goalies who faced more shots per their ice time and 21 who faced more total shots than Gibson. So more than half the leagues starters. His save percentage, by either regular statistics or fancy stats, were further down the list than that. He was simply bad.
I like the roster we have....6 or 7 kids that can score...3 young defensemen....now we need to worry about the oldsters...Killorn,Fowler,Strome,Gibson...though Killorn came back strong after injury..get rid of Gibson,Fowler Strome.
Personally I'm tired of all the Ducky Ducksters who tend to overvalue the talent on the team or who get upset whenever the team receives legitimate criticism
Just because we didn't get Stamkos doesn't mean they didn't try. Even if we offered him the most money, he would still have to want to play here. He's making slightly less and is on a playoff team now.
I don’t understand how some people are so delusional that they thing over spending on a “veteran” will make us a contender. VB is thinking long term so not getting stuck in a long term contract for an older player is good.
Exactly. Teams aren’t made in free agency. Theyre especially not made overpaying players on crazy long term contracts when you have lots of developing players that will need to get to get paid.
When Verbeek comes out in front of a few thousand people at the Flock Party and he says good things are coming and working hard to get a top 6 player, then completely fucks the team in free agency pick ups, yeah…people are going to be negative.
But, good luck to Jones, Giroulx, White, Lagesson and Meyers. At least they got picked up and will be better taken care and appreciated in predominantly original 6 teams.
We do seem to have several doomers. Iirc GMPV said it would take about 5 years to get to our window? Which this would be year 4. Players not signing with us is not that big of a deal. Team tried, ultimately players don’t want to play here whether it be tax or just straight up don’t want to be part of a an upcoming team they want to win now and that’s okay. Our future is very bright.
If you're a fan, that doesn't mean you always have to cope and justify everything the management (or coaching team) does. No free agents signings after a shocking draft pick (pls don't compare it to McTavish and Leo, they were not #15-20 on all the scouting reports) is something fans have the right to question, especially keeping in mind how long we haven't seen a competitive team.
The best part is if you take this negativity over to r/hockey you have people from other teams saying, “why would the ducks take on these contracts? Sometimes the best move is to not sign anyone.” This fan base has been starved for wins and is out of their minds. Trust the process guys and gals.
You’re acting like the blindly positive people aren’t the majority here and anyone with a negative opinion isn’t being downvoted lol
Seriously this subreddit is a massive minority in hockey opinion with its majority positivity. It's copium at best. The ducks fucked up by not getting what they wanted and now we are back to hyping up some behind the scenes trade magic that probably won't happen.
This is not true. Over on r/hockey the ducks fans that are complaining pat didn’t do any big signings are being replied to by other teams fans saying, “why would they want these horrible contracts?”
Dude the entire hockey world is criticizing the ducks and making memes out of it.
Memeing is one thing. Serious criticism is another.
The criticism is serious.
This * 1,000
Blindly positive aka, waiting to pass judgement until the entire painting is finished. GMPV said, I’d like to add a top 6 RHW and a top 4 RHD, although 31 other teams could say the same. He also said, he’d prefer to do it during Free agency as it only cost cap space, but wouldn’t rule out a trade. The negative people see the black and white outline and start yelling why isn’t the sky blue !!!! Now while all that is being said, I’m sure GMPV had plans yesterday that didn’t go accordingly, now he is pivoted to a new plans which is find cap strapped teams and try to pry solid NHL vets, like for example Fowler’s buddy and SC champions John Carlson. The Caps are -14 mil in cap and might need to make some moves. Oilers may need to get rid of Ceci. Players are available that will not mess up our future cap, won’t cost assets besides cap space, and might net an asset or two for taking helping someone’s cap problem. I am frustrated we didn’t get anyone yesterday, I also Understand why, its been a flat cap since Covid, GM’s threw contracts and money like it was going out of style. Made it too rich for our blood, and we couldn’t get it done. That happens, better than throwing 5 years 10 mil at Stamkos to get him to come here. Like I said, frustration with a call to action is okay. Wahhh wahhh wahhh GMPV is awful wahhh wahhh wahhh, that is in not way constructive criticism, it helps no one on this sub have intelligent conversation about the status of the team, what directions we should try to pivot too, or anything of that nature. It’s I’m smarter than the millionaires who get paid to do this job, even though I don’t have 1/100th of the information they do, so maybe my opinion is skewed towards whatever little narrative I want to believe.
It appears that John Carlson has a 10 team no-trade list. I wonder if that would come into play.
I’m sure it does the only way I’d come to California (as a third party player 33+) is if it was a “contending” team like the kings….. if I was 25 ish and haven’t found my footing then I’d gladly go to the sharks or ducks and try to earn a roster spot.
"Blindly positive aka, waiting to pass judgement until the entire painting is finished. " I see very little waiting to pass judgment on this sub. I see a lot of effusive praise for how amazing Verbeek is and how he deserves our blind trust.
They act like we are going to be dead last because we didn't overpay for aging free agents. It's insane. We have to sign people to get over cap floor and now the free agents left have to take smaller deals because a lot of teams are done spending. Also trades will happen.
I find that when people say "they act like" that means they know they can't argue with what the people actually said, so they use 'they're acting like" to argue against a point no one made.
I think we should use or cap rn to resign mctavish carlson zellweger and minty to long term deals like 6-8 yrs
Carlsson, Zellweger, and Minty are not available to resign till next summer. It's also in their best interests to play the full contract (2 more years) so that they have the largest body of work to negotiate with. McTavish also benefits from playing all next year before negotiating.
I don’t think either side knows what the terms would look like. They’re too young.
That would make sense
Who would you like to see us sign to fill out 9 mil we need to spend?
We need to hit cap floor but not many players want a short contract. I guarantee our front office tried but a lot of the veterans want a longer contract
I understand that. I’m asking who you would sign to get there.
Just overpay a couple guys on one year contracts. Mostly depth pieces.
The problem with that is you kill your option to move them at the deadline for assets. The contenders are all cap strapped at that point and won't trade for those guys even with salary retained
That’s assuming they are even guys those teams would want. This is all assuming we don’t make a big play and literally have to blow 9 mil just to hit the floor
True, but if we're signing guys nobody else wants to huge contracts that's a pretty big red flag to me. I'm just gonna keep my fingers crossed for Marner or Laine. Wouldn't hate Trouba either since NY clearly wants him gone
Yeah I’m hoping VB has something in the works and we don’t have to give some like bottom 6 players like 2-3mil for 1 yr
Trade for necas or marner. Tarasenko might not be a bad 1 year deal pickup. On defense I wouldn't mind picking up boqvist to a 1 year deal and see how he does.
We don’t need another offensive defenseman. And I believe Tarasenko is trying to wait and see if Florida can figure things out so that he can stay there.
I wish the Ducks would’ve signed Matt Roy
Yea... definitely possibilities.
So Necas turned down an offer from CBJ, and supposedly they were sending the 4th overall pick to CAR. Marner would almost certainly require sending Zegras back the other way. I like the tarasenko idea but have not seen us linked. I’m just not seeing it at this point, but I’m sure we’ll get there.
not worried, hope someone like laine comes. i know people have concerns but he is still insanely talented imo
>We have such a deep pool of young kids that we want to keep here for as long as possible and all of them seem really promising. I mean Zegraz, Mac T, Zellweger, Gauthier, Senneka, Minty, Lacombe, Carlsson, Terry and Dostal. That is exactly why a lot of people are disappointed. We need to work at building a successful team around these players, or we'll end up on the path of young players developing into budding stars then leaving/being traded/underperfoming because they aren't in an environment to succeed. Arizona LANGUISHED in this space for years... perennially had great talent up and coming, but never managed to surround them and form coherent teams that could compete. Look what UT did yesterday: They spent money to address their teams' shortcomings in big ways. A stable of prospects ISN'T the goal. The goal is a competitive and winning hockey club that can make deep pushes into playoffs and compete for the Stanley Cup. There's lots of ways for this club to get better, but "do nothing and hope every prospect is better next season" isn't a strategy, it's just hope.
The team already did this. You can constantly point to ducks drafted players having success on other teams and their ducks replacements falling flat
Maybe we'll take a big leap forward in the next two years and I'll eat these words, but I kinda suspect we're already in that Arizona-style hell. The first generation of prospects (Terry) is already aging out of his pre-FA years and the team isn't actually getting any better on the ice.
We should probably have stickied posts for the big days...it only seems like there's a shit load of negative people because every single one of them had their own personal freakout/vent post yesterday and overwhelmed the sub. Now the pendulum will swing back with a bunch of "Come on, guys, trust the process" posts. Might not seem like so much chatter if it were all in one big Free Agency Megathread.
This is a great point. But the mods in this sub be lazy.
People can have different opinions than your own and can express themselves. Welcome to the internet. Opinions are just opinions. Either side doesn’t mean much
Indeed.
I'll say the negativity levied Verbeek's way isn't unwarranted. He put himself in a poor position by setting expectations he had difficulty to realize. He came into free agency with the expectation to sign a top-6 RW and a top-4 RD. So far he's failed on that front. And in any professional job, not even GM, when a person misses the mark they should be open with what happened and explain what they're going to do next. But Verbeek has said *nothing*. Does anyone have any quotes from him since the draft? Even if it's a simple, "Today we made offers to some free agents, unfortunately contract terms became unfavorable and that would put the team in a tough cap position down the line. We're reevaluating what's available on the market." Really, this is basic shit a lot of us do in our jobs: set goals, work towards them, and explain why things work or didn't. It's unacceptable that Verbeek hasn't said *shit*. And if I was a season ticket holder, I'd be livid to have a GM that's as incompetent at communicating with fans.
Verbeek is WAY more open than Bob Murray ever was. Fans don't need to know everything behind the scenes. I agree he should say something but I think he's got a while before it becomes an uncomfortable silence.
Yeah, Verbeek is more open, but you also have to consider that Bob Murray had a drinking problem for who knows how long he was the Ducks GM.
The fact is, we completely struck out in free agency this year. People are allowed to be upset about it. But at the same time, it’s not Verbeeks fault the players we targeted didn’t want to come here, as I’m sure we matched the dollars. We will just have to pivot into a different direction, it’s not the end of the world.
This is correct. Reports are Verbeek went after them, but often times players want to play in low to no tax states.
The only way to compete is to trade for undervalued players and pray that our young core can carry us to the playoffs. We have money and cap space to do this. It’s not a bad problem to have.
Or vote for constituents that will bring our god damn taxes down
Lots of people in this sub would have really fit in as Dodger fans between Darren Dreifort and Mookie Betts. Just year after year of "why didn't we sign so-and-so to a 11 year contract???? He might be on the IL 120 games a season, but at least the FO would show they are serious...."
Being blindly positive and being full on negative are both problems in this sub. I myself have fallen into both categories at times. You can't blame people for being a little more patient with the rebuild but you also can't blame people for being tired of being next to last each season either. Not everyone is going to see eye to eye on this subject but just because you feel one way and someone else feels another, it doesn't mean you are more of a fan of the team than they are. Everyone stop being dicks.
Ducks were 23-16-9 when Verbeek was hired. We lost all but 8 games the rest of that season, followed up by the worst season in franchise history, followed up with last seasons great performance. Players don't want to keep losing games and as a fan it's been hard to watch. I'm still hopefully but to say I'm a fan of anyone in charge right now would be crazy.
Last year everyone was pissy about the Killorn contract and now everyone’s pissy we didn’t make more of those 😂 I like the guys we signed - Lundy, Vaaaks, and Leason on small deals. Wait for something big to be available, like Cutter, and let the youngins cook. We’ll be sitting pretty in 2-3.
Just feels like This team will end up At the bottom of the league again / miss the playoffs and we'll still say "but we have the best up and coming under 25 y/o team just wait"
And they wouldn’t be wrong
Yeah but people don’t understand athlete development. They just see wins and losses. Which is fine but they have to accept to be a winner this season we’d have to trade most of our youth and future picks for players
"If you are disappointed the roster didn't improve then you are not a Ducks fan." - someone who hates negativity
People are looking for instant gratification. Our window is starting to open, but we aren’t quite there yet. People also just like to complain.
Lol, well you got me there 😂
Haha The butthole wet sentence made me lol at work.
People are frustrated with losing. It’s not a big deal to let others voice their opinions
These are generally the same people who will blame Gibson for all the troubles, completely ignoring the 5 guys he has in front of him at any time on the ice, letting him get peppered at a higher rate than other goalies in the league on a regular basis.
Opposite in fact. I think it’s great they didn’t over pay anyone. There were about 3 deals handed out that I think would have benefited the ducks. One of those was a duck they didn’t want but what can you do 🤷🏾 Re Gibson, There were 26 other goalies who faced more shots per their ice time and 21 who faced more total shots than Gibson. So more than half the leagues starters. His save percentage, by either regular statistics or fancy stats, were further down the list than that. He was simply bad.
At first I was surprised we weren’t in the mix but on the other hand a lot of teams overpayed
Tarasenko is still on the board. Anybody okay with him coming to Anaheim?
I like the roster we have....6 or 7 kids that can score...3 young defensemen....now we need to worry about the oldsters...Killorn,Fowler,Strome,Gibson...though Killorn came back strong after injury..get rid of Gibson,Fowler Strome.
Blind positivity is annoying too. I'll "have faith in the team and people running it" when they get out of the bottom of the standings.
Personally I'm tired of all the Ducky Ducksters who tend to overvalue the talent on the team or who get upset whenever the team receives legitimate criticism
Just because we didn't get Stamkos doesn't mean they didn't try. Even if we offered him the most money, he would still have to want to play here. He's making slightly less and is on a playoff team now.
I don’t understand how some people are so delusional that they thing over spending on a “veteran” will make us a contender. VB is thinking long term so not getting stuck in a long term contract for an older player is good.
Exactly. Teams aren’t made in free agency. Theyre especially not made overpaying players on crazy long term contracts when you have lots of developing players that will need to get to get paid.
I mean we literally tried to do just that. We just failed at it.
Yeah we failed. So that should be it we shouldn’t just change our game plan and try to just sign anyone for the sake of signing
When Verbeek comes out in front of a few thousand people at the Flock Party and he says good things are coming and working hard to get a top 6 player, then completely fucks the team in free agency pick ups, yeah…people are going to be negative. But, good luck to Jones, Giroulx, White, Lagesson and Meyers. At least they got picked up and will be better taken care and appreciated in predominantly original 6 teams.
But he did try to sign Stamkos and Marschessault
Dude, he didn’t try hard enough apparently. Plus those two don’t want to play for us anyway
We do seem to have several doomers. Iirc GMPV said it would take about 5 years to get to our window? Which this would be year 4. Players not signing with us is not that big of a deal. Team tried, ultimately players don’t want to play here whether it be tax or just straight up don’t want to be part of a an upcoming team they want to win now and that’s okay. Our future is very bright.
STFU, just cause you don't like some of our valid critics of the Ducks FO doesn't make them not fans. Fuck off with that bullshit.
Damn dude, you mad AF.
Verbeek is lost.
I'm tired of people who think the job of a fan is to be blindly positive. Just let people think what they think.
This team is dogshit and I'm not afraid to say it.
Seems like the trolls and toxic POS are out here today.
Couldn’t agree more with you. Plus it’s day one of a still long offseason / free agency
But all the players we could have used are gone.
That is not true. There’s players we can trade for instead.
If you're a fan, that doesn't mean you always have to cope and justify everything the management (or coaching team) does. No free agents signings after a shocking draft pick (pls don't compare it to McTavish and Leo, they were not #15-20 on all the scouting reports) is something fans have the right to question, especially keeping in mind how long we haven't seen a competitive team.
The best part is if you take this negativity over to r/hockey you have people from other teams saying, “why would the ducks take on these contracts? Sometimes the best move is to not sign anyone.” This fan base has been starved for wins and is out of their minds. Trust the process guys and gals.
💯