Significant Injuries to Key Pieces Steepened the Climb for the 2023-24 Ducks
The Anaheim Ducks were near the top of the list of man-games lost due to injury in 2023-24. It's wasn't just about the number of injuries, it was who was injured that devastated the team.
Significant Injuries to Key Pieces Steepened the Climb for the 2023-24 DucksThe Anaheim Ducks 2023-24 season came to an end on Thursday after a 4-1 win over the Vegas Golden Knights.
Their final record was 27-50-5, good enough for 59 points and 30th in the overall NHL standings.
After five consecutive seasons missing the playoffs and selecting in the top ten of the NHL draft, the Ducks were finally in position to begin their climb out of the basement of the NHL standings and turn the corner on their rebuild in 2023-24.
On June 5, 2023, General Manager Pat Verbeek and the Ducks' front office hired Greg Cronin as head coach. With him, Cronin brought with him a demanding system that required an unmatched work ethic and accountability from every player on the roster. He was brought in to overhaul the culture of the organization and instill his ideals on and off the ice.
The Ducks opening night roster featured 12 players 25 years old or younger and six rookies (Leo Carlsson, Pavel Mintyukov, Tristan Luneau, Jackson LaCombe, Bo Groulx, and Lukas Dostal).
With the amount of young talent (talent that would likely make up the future core of a sustainable contending team in Anaheim) already playing in the NHL, player development was emphasized as the top priority of the 2023-24 season. A lot of young stars were set to fill meaningful roles out of the gate in their budding careers.
With a roster that young and one asked to meet a new elevated set of standards, a potential playoff push may have been too tall an order. Growing pains were expected, the number of actual pains was not.
The Ducks finished the season with a total of 304 man-games lost due to injury. That number would be good enough for 7th most in the NHL. The number of injuries didn't have nearly as much of an impact as who sustained those injuries, however.
As mentioned previously, the Ducks made five top-ten selections in the NHL entry drafts between 2019-2023 (Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, Mason McTavish, Pavel Mintyukov, and Leo Carlsson), and every one of those players missed significant time due to injury this season. Max Jones (24th overall in 2016) and Isac Lundestrom (23rd in '18) were also former first round picks who missed large portions of the season with ailments.
Here's a list of the total man-games lost from players on the Ducks roster:
In a vacuum, the raw numbers were a mountain in and of itself to try and overcome, but the inconsistency in the nightly lineup caused an entirely different set of challenges.
"It's definitely hard," Ryan Strome stated after a Ducks practice in March when asked about the lack of nightly lineup consistency. "It's just much easier when you know the tendencies of guys. For myself, going back and forth from center to wing is tough."
If there's a silver lining to be found in the Ducks injury situation this season, it's that players were forced to handle adversity and display versatility within the lineup.
"As we progress, hopefully next year and the year after, these hard times are things we can lean on, learn from, and make us better going forward," Strome concluded.