The first day of Anaheim Ducks training camp is in the books, and the buzz around the organization is palpable from the players to the coaching staff to the front office. The message has remained constant that the expectation for the 2025-26 Ducks is to make the playoffs after a seven-year absence.

Predictably, much of the excitement around the team is focused on the Ducks’ brand new head coach: three-time Stanley Cup champion and second-winningest coach in NHL history Joel Quenneville.

The first day of camp was focused more on tempo and flow than on lineup construction and system implementation. However, there were nuggets to be unearthed in that regard that could and will likely have significant positive ramifications moving forward.

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Throughout Greg Cronin’s tenure as head coach and the most recent memory of Dallas Eakins’, the Ducks had implemented a man-to-man defensive zone coverage system, popularized by the success of some of the most recent Stanley Cup champions: the 2020 and 2021 Tampa Bay Lightning, as well as the 2022 Colorado Avalanche and the most recent Florida Panthers teams who run a variation of it, just slightly looser.

The idea behind it is to limit chances opposing teams generate off the cycle by preventing off-puck attackers space to find soft ice. The downside that has plagued the last few iterations of the Ducks' teams is when opponents ran weaves and switches high in the zone or along the perimeter. The Ducks teams, as constructed, hadn’t been able to kill plays early enough and wound up chasing for extended periods until opponents capitalized on miscommunications or mistimed reads, however slight.

“It's more of a zone defense, pressure defense. Want to out-man them in areas, and you want to kill plays,” Quenneville said after day one of his first training camp in four years. “We spent a lot of time in our end last year. We want to do it to them instead of us.

“You’ve got to kill the plays in your own end, and you want to protect and keep the puck in the offensive zone. That's an area of focus, it always has been. But everybody wants to play offense, so let's do a good job defensively, and we can enjoy having the puck. But it's easier said than done, too.”

Another pitfall of the man-coverage system previously deployed was how scattered teammates were throughout the zone when the Ducks were able to generate turnovers and look for outlets. This often led to disconnected breakouts or high flips to the safety of the neutral zone, nullifying any opportunity to be generated off the counter.

The new zone system will likely afford the on-ice unit more predictability when it comes to finding teammates for outlets, maintaining possession, and building speed with possession throughout.

It doesn’t take the keenest eye to conclude that the Ducks have been hemmed in their own end for the better part of their entire rebuild, and it bears out in both traditional and advanced metrics. Over the past three seasons, the Ducks have held 44.5% of the shots on goal share, 45% of the shot attempt share, and 43.5% of the expected goals share, ranking 31st out of 32 teams in every category.

On-ice tactics are just a part of what makes a successful team, but implementing a system conducive to the roster can go a long way toward establishing a baseline for success.

In theory, the older players with limitations regarding how much ice they can cover will benefit from being able to utilize their experience and length to break up dangerous possessions, while the younger or more explosive players can reserve a greater amount of energy to formulate counterattacks with added levels of reliability when it comes to knowing where the other four players are on the ice at all times.

“I think that holding onto the puck, protecting the puck, getting on in the inside and putting (the puck) in areas that you can sustain possession and zone time and involve all five guys, everybody's part of the cycle or the possession game,” Quenneville continued. “Just place a premium on puck placement and a premium on possession.

“Keeping the puck in our own end, that's where, collectively, all five guys are going to be working together. We're going to get better at it. It's going to be something we take pride in.”

The coaching staff will still have to implement an offensive zone forechecking scheme, neutral zone forechecking scheme, and determine how to best utilize the vast offensive talents of the roster to generate off the cycle, but everything stems and grows from how the team plays in the defensive zone.

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