Anaheim Ducks 2024-25 season preview: Playoff chances, projected points, roster rankings

By Dom Luszczyszyn, Sean Gentille and Shayna Goldman

A poor defensive team with next to no star power, thanks to a still-dormant youth movement, the Anaheim Ducks once again find themselves near the bottom.

Patience is key here for a team that's slowly rebuilding piece by piece. If the time comes, Anaheim's rise will be dramatic — a breakthrough that makes the Ducks a force to be reckoned with for years to come.

Pinpointing that breakthrough isn't easy, but it doesn't feel very likely to happen this season.

The projection

It's hard to predict breakout seasons. We can fashion a guess based on age curves, but those generally only predict a modest bump each year. That's what's expected here from Anaheim, whose true talent baseline gets bumped up by two goals after accounting for age. That's the fourth-highest mark in the league where the average is minus-4.

And it's partly why the Ducks aren't expected to do much this season, with a projected 70-point season.

That's an 11-point improvement from last year — though it's also a three-point drop-off from where they were to start last season. The storyline heading into last season was similar to the one heading into this season: that maybe this is the year the youth breaks through. But there was just a one-point increase between 2022-23 and 2023-24.

In that sense, the rebuild is feeling stagnant as we all wait for the transformative explosion from the team's young core, the one that gets this team into the playoff mix. Maybe that day arrives this season and 70 points ends up being far too low. But the possibility that the team falls flat again despite all the youth — as they did last year — is a real possibility, too.

We'll believe it when we finally see it.

The big question

Can the young core finally break through as impact players?

Let's start by throwing it back to the closing sentences of last season's Ducks preview : "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."

That sounds close — perhaps dishearteningly so, if you're a Ducks fan — to the way we're discussing this team a full calendar year later. Nothing awful happened to Anaheim's half-dozen core candidates in 2023-24 ... but nothing great happened, either. The clock is always ticking in the NHL , and for some of the Ducks, it's starting to speed up.

That's not to say last year was another disaster, or that the outlook for 2024-25 is bleak. Anaheim, through it all, is still No. 3 in Corey Pronman's Pipeline rankings , with three players in the system projected to be either All-Star quality or better. At coach, Greg Cronin deserves credit for taking over, without hyperbole, one of the worst defensive groups in recent history and helping it progress to garden-variety crumminess. After the events of 2022-23, allowing the 10th-most goals per 60 at five-on-five last season, both real and expected, was a true feat of coaching.

With that came a dip in offensive production, along with some injuries and tough-love playing-time decisions, The end result — for now — is modest actual growth in 2023-24 and modest projected growth for 2024-25. All of the Ducks' young forwards are on track to be better, but not yet difference-makers. We'll note here that Troy Terry , as the team's best player and a 27-year-old entering his seventh NHL season, is exempt from the discussion.

No player in the system (and few league-wide) has as much franchise-center capability as Leo Carlsson . His size, skill and highlight-reel potential are clear, and his point production — especially considering his age and managed workload — was solid enough; 29 points in 55 games as a teenager is nothing to sniff at and is a big reason he has the second-highest projected Net Rating among Anaheim's forwards. Right now, though, his most impressive attribute is his work in transition. His D-zone retrievals, exits and offensive zone entries were all in the 90th percentile or higher among centers. That's remarkable stuff for any rookie, let alone one playing his first season in North America, and speaks to his potential as a game-changing offensive catalyst. An 82-game season from him might be enough to make Anaheim's rebuild stick. He's projected to jump to a 60-point pace this season.

In the first 20 games of Mason McTavish 's second NHL season, he had 21 points. Pretty good. The issues: That already put him at half of his season total, thanks in part to a series of injuries to him and the rest of the Ducks' top six, and Anaheim was a markedly worse defensive team with him on the ice. A projected Defensive Rating of minus-4 is abysmal, near the absolute bottom of the league, an enormous drag on his overall rating and a legitimate red flag — though it's worth noting that the number is giving plenty of weight to the mess of 2022-23. His shot remains an obvious weapon, and Pronman still believes in him as a high-end second-line center, but it's still early in both directions.

Cutter Gauthier is the most recent addition to the NHL mix, a prototypical top-six winger with size, skill and a high-end shot. In him, Cronin will have a viable option outside Terry, Frank Vatrano and potentially Trevor Zegras to play with a skilled center.

In the case of Zegras, we're starting to veer into true "crossroads-type season" territory, as Eric Stephens called it . Cronin seemed to make an example of him, and injuries limited him to just 31 games. There are reasons for optimism, if you care to look. For one, offensive skill like his doesn't disappear at age 22. Plus, his defensive impacts improved to the point that it's fair to say that the Ducks were better in their own end with him on the ice. Either way, it's fair to ask two separate questions: whether he can regain his first-line trajectory or settle in as a 60-point complementary piece, and whether he'll do either with the Ducks. They're likely to get their answers, on him and perhaps a few other players, over the next several months.

The wild card

Can John Gibson put together a full season as a capable starter?

Each year, Gibson shows glimpses of Still Having It. Eventually, the Ducks end up bleeding so many chances that it sinks his play.

That's been the case over the last six seasons. It's hard to put that much blame on the goaltender, considering just how bad the team in front of him has been. Take the 2022-23 season, when the Ducks set new highs in the analytics era in shots and expected goals against at five-on-five. Few can thrive in that environment.

But even when accounting for his surroundings, Gibson has still fallen below the average starter for the sixth straight year. Among the 40 goalies with at least 35 games played, his goals saved above expected ranked 27th. It doesn't come close to his prime years and it doesn't do enough to move the needle with the model either, which considers the last five years.

Gibson's game still got derailed late in the season last year, but the one positive is the decline didn't come as early or drastically as it has in seasons past. Maybe that has to do with some of the defensive improvements at even strength in front of him. If Cronin can keep building structure in Anaheim, Gibson may have his best chance in years to show he is still capable as a No. 1 again. The Ducks don't need him to be otherworldly or near his prime levels at this point, just reliable enough to keep them in games.

The strengths

We're still waiting for the day that this section is filled with Anaheim's ducklings. We've waited so long that Terry has graduated from "duckling" to one of the team's grizzled vets.

For now, Terry is still Anaheim's best player, which perfectly encapsulates why the Ducks still rank so close to the bottom. He's an effective player, don't get us wrong — a strong 60-point bet with 70-point upside who does a lot of work from the wing in all three zones. But Anaheim's go-to guy being a run-of-the-mill top-line winger doesn't scream "competitive hockey club."

On a playoff team, Terry would be slotted perfectly on the second line. Here, he's momentarily miscast as a go-to guy.

Offensively, both McTavish and Zegras are getting there. Carlsson's transition work puts him on the right track, too. But all three are still better suited to the second line at present time until proven otherwise. Maybe this is the season it happens, and the addition of top prospect Gauthier could help offer a spark, but we'll have to see it to believe it. Cleaning things up defensively — especially for McTavish and Zegras — would be a good place to start. Getting more offense out of the power play would also help.

That goes for Pavel Mintyukov on the back end as well, as he carries a similar profile: great offensively for his role, but a liability without the puck. Last year, a weak defensive Ducks team allowed more goals and chances against with Mintyukov on the ice despite a fairly cushy role. Even with the puck, Mintyukov could stand to be more active. In terms of retrieving pucks, exiting the defensive zone and entering the offensive zone, Mintyukov was one of the league's least-involved defenders. The potential is there for him to do more with the puck, which could help activate everyone in front of him.

Olen Zellweger carries a bit more value, which may surprise given some of his weaker raw numbers. That's a product of playing tougher minutes, exclusively on the top pair with Cam Fowler , where his defensive numbers looked stronger than Mintyukov's. The model sees a bit more immediate upside in Zellweger for that reason, but both players are obviously promising wild cards on the back end. They should be pillars on this blue line for years to come, and the minute they figure that out at a true top-pair-level may be the minute this team takes off.

In net, Lukas Dostal flashed some potential of his own last year with a .903 save percentage, saving 2.8 goals above expected. Those are strong numbers at age 24, behind a team this poor defensively, and there's a decent possibility he can steal the starter's reins this year.

Aside from the youth movement, the Ducks do have a few intriguing depth pieces — there just aren't enough of them. Isac Lundestrom is the perfect defensive fourth-line center whose lengthy absence was really felt last season, while Brian Dumoulin is a nice addition to the third pair in the same vein. Radko Gudas is a perfect No. 4 defenseman who filled an obvious defensive void on the team's blue line last season. His plus-3.7 Defensive Rating led the Ducks.

There are a lot of holes still left to be filled in Anaheim, and the Ducks have the internal solutions to fill them. For now, it's a waiting game.

The weaknesses

That waiting game may one day end up paying off into a stacked lineup, but for now, it's unfortunately the root of what's wrong with Anaheim's current roster. Until the kids grow into what we think they'll grow into, the roster doesn't look very different from a typical basement-dweller that features a lot of players slotted above their current abilities.

The team's young core may all end up as star players, but for now, the Ducks are devoid of any star talent. Arguably their only player in that realm at the moment is Terry, who landed in Tier 5A in our annual Player Tiers project . Only the Sharks start the season with a worse top-end talent situation.

The league's best teams are competitive for a reason, because they have elite players they can count on. As scoring continues to go up, the NHL has tilted further toward being a star-power league, and Anaheim's top guys simply don't shine bright enough. Not yet, anyway.

It would help a lot more if the supporting cast offered more support, though, given how young the team's core is. While the Ducks have gotten useful contributions from some support pieces, the issue is that most players find themselves playing well above their means.

Vatrano is a perfect example of that — a useful depth scorer thrust into a top-six role, where he was able to put the puck in the net at a high rate (37 goals!) but at the cost of actually winning minutes. The Ducks were crushed defensively with Vatrano on the ice last season, to the point that all the value he gained as a scorer (plus-6 Offensive Rating) was given right back the other way (minus-5 Defensive Rating). Only four forwards had a worse Defensive Rating than Vatrano last season.

A lot of Vatrano's offensive value also came on the power play, where he scored a lot himself (4.1 goals per 60) but didn't actually help the Ducks' success on the power play (7.3 goals per 60). Vatrano has a good shot, but his 21 shots per 60 clearly wasn't a winning strategy for anything other than his goal totals. That was nine more than the next-highest Duck. His lower projected Offensive Rating is a reflection of a likely reduced role on the power play this season, which pushes him back to his true level — a sheltered third-line scorer. That's where he's slated to start the season, though the defensive prowess — or lack thereof — of that unit is a major concern. Neither Ryan Strome nor Robby Fabbri look capable of playing in an average top nine these days for that reason. Alex Killorn , who is closer to a third-line player himself at this stage of his career, would be a better fit on that line, but without many great options, he's forced to play in the top six instead.

Again, growth from the young core can solve a lot of these problems. For now, it just means bigger roles for players who can't handle them.

The same is likely true on defense with Fowler, who shouldn't be leaned on as a go-to guy at 32. At his best, he was a decent No. 2 defenseman, and part of the reason for Anaheim's struggles during this era has been an over-reliance on Fowler at the top of the lineup. That came to a head last season, when the team was badly outscored in his minutes. Yes, he played tough minutes where he babysat rookies all season — but it was still a rough year for Fowler.

While there's likely some signal in that, given that his relative numbers on a bad team went deep into the negatives, the model may be punishing him too much for it. That's especially true in light of how good Fowler's puck-moving numbers still are. His ability to retrieve pucks and exit the zone cleanly continues to be elite. His underlying numbers looked much better with Zellweger (45 percent expected goals) compared to with Jackson LaCombe (39 percent), too, leaving some room for optimism this season.

Any optimism for this team hinges on the ducklings breaking out, something a model can't reasonably predict with much accuracy. It can expect modest growth based on age, but not the type of explosive leap players take to the next level.

Given how many Ducks are of the age where that's a reasonable possibility, there's a lot of upward mobility for many players in Anaheim. Until they show it, though, the current state of the roster definitely leaves you wanting more.

The best case

Terry finally has help from Carlsson, McTavish, Zegras, Gauthier, Zellweger, Mintyukov and Dostal — all of whom break out into legitimate impact players. The Ducks raise their level considerably and are in the playoff race for the majority of the season.

The worst case

Some of the team's young players take a step, but it's not big enough, and others still struggle to show their stuff at the NHL level. The depth around the core drags them down and the goaltending is abysmal enough to keep the Ducks in the bottom three. Again.

The bottom line

The Ducks may or may not be competitive this season. What seems fairly certain, though, is that they'll be interesting — and while that's not going to provide comfort for their fans, it's a win for the rest of us. Time to see whether Pat Verbeek and company can pull it off.

How the model works

How the model adjusts for context

Understanding projection uncertainty

Evolving Hockey

Natural Stat Trick

Hockey Reference

All Three Zones Tracking by Corey Sznajder

Read the other 2024-25 season previews here.

(Top photo of Radko Gudas: Ronald Martinez / )