The Anaheim Ducks are down to days to gather assets on veterans and pending UFAs if they aren't part of future plans. What are Anaheim's options?
As the NHL trade deadline on March 3 draws near, one team that hasn’t gotten a head start yet is the Anaheim Ducks.
Despite being the NHL's last-place team (18-34-7) and having eight pending UFAs, the Ducks have not made a single move. Of all the teams currently buying into the trend of holding out players for “trade-related reasons,” the Ducks couldn’t be faulted for keeping a half-dozen of their veterans off the ice.
However, Anaheim GM Pat Verbeek has kept his cards close to the vest, and hasn’t shipped out any of his players this season, including their top five tradeable assets we mentioned in November.
If that doesn’t change in the next six days, there will be many a lost opportunity to turn an asset this season into, perhaps, multiple assets down the road. Of course, the pain will all be worth it if the Ducks win the draft lottery and make phenom Connor Bedard a resident of Anaheim. But before the deadline, Verbeek has no excuse not to peel away a number of vets and give himself a boost for the future.
The Ducks already have six picks in the first three rounds of this year’s draft, but they only have one first-round pick – their own – and there’s no question Verbeek would like to add an additional first-rounder.
But, in part because Anaheim’s terrible play has hurt individual player performances, the Ducks may need to package a couple of their veterans to bring in that type of high-end return. Maybe you want John Klingberg *and* Dmitry Kulikov. Maybe that gets you a first-rounder from a team looking for offense and a good deal of depth on defense in one fell swoop.
The Bruins and Maple Leafs have set the market for multi-player moves, and while Anaheim doesn’t have exactly the same players on the trade block, they surely can leverage a couple of teams against each other and drive up his asking price.
As per CapFriendly, the Ducks have all kinds of salary cap space to help facilitate trades by the deadline. That flexibility alone is enough reason why Verbeek has to be active in the next week.
It’s true that Anaheim has had difficulties making moves because three of their four pending UFAs also have some form of no-trade clause in their contracts, but as we often remind readers, no-trade clauses are usually simply a way to give players some say into where they’re traded. There have been very few cases of players digging their heels in and refusing any moves at all, and the Ducks players on the block likely would have their competitive juices flowing in a positive way in any trade, so they’d welcome a move to push them out of town.
Other than his pending UFA defensemen – Klingberg, Kulikov and Kevin Shattenkirk, most notably – Verbeek doesn’t have much to offer up front. That could change if a team wanted a veteran like Adam Henrique, but he has another year left on his contract at a cap hit of $5.825 million. But that’s a tougher ask, and just getting out from under his contract will likely be the best Verbeek can get for Henrique.
Anaheim isn’t the only team that should be making multiple moves by the deadline, but every team in their sorry position absolutely should be clearing the decks as much as possible.
If it turns out to be a buyer’s market for most players, that doesn’t mean Verbeek should sneer and pull his soon-to-be-UFAs off the block. It just means they’ve got to squeeze opposing GMs as much as possible. If that means a bunch of second-round picks are what they wind up with, so be it.
The Ducks’ fortunes can be improved for the long haul, and not doing anything doesn’t help in that respect. It’s time for them to move on from a good deal of veteran players.