Read about the Duck's resurgence after a slow start to the 2007-08 season in this blast from the past from the THN Arvhice:
There's always talk of a Stanley Cup hangover and everyone thought the Anaheim Ducks were experiencing one in 2007, except general manager Brian Burke.
Burke was confident his team would find their feet and turn things around, and that's exactly what they did.
Read about the Duck's resurgence after a slow start to the 2007-08 season in this blast from the past from the THN Arvhice:
ATTACK OF THE DUCKS
Even when his team was struggling early on, looking like so many defending champions before them that had trouble getting back on their feet after a summer of partying and celebrating, the GM says he knew better days were just around the corner.
Now that his Ducks have taken flight, it looks like he was right.
“I know what this group can do,” said Burke matter-of-factly. “As I told our coaching staff, this team reminds me of watching a bear wake up in the zoo. He stretches one limb and then the other limb and it’s a slow process, but when he’s done, you’ve got a bear.”
When Burke talks about, “this group,” he’s speaking of the core of the team that won the Stanley Cup last season. That’s because, by necessity and by design, this year’s Ducks team is significantly different from last year’s squad.
Burke was forced to tinker with his roster and – given his history of making significant changes and never resting until he has the team he thinks can win it all – there’s every reason to suggest he’s not done yet.
For much of the first half of 2007-08, the Ducks were a shadow of the team that bounced the Ottawa Senators from the Stanley Cup final in five games last June. From an opening night 5-4 loss to Los Angeles (in England, of all places) through the first 20 games, the Ducks won back-to-back games just once.
Even a modest four-game winning streak in mid-November wasn’t enough to vault the Ducks into a playoff position.
To suggest nobody saw this coming would be silly; repeating as the Stanley Cup champion is the NHL’s Holy Grail. The last team to do it was Detroit in 1997 and ’98.
Of the four Cup winners prior to Anaheim, one missed the playoffs the following season and the other three were eliminated in the first round. The misery also extends to the Cup losers: one was bounced from the playoffs in the opening round the next year, while the three others failed to even qualify for the dance.
So Burke knew what his Ducks were up against.
“The Stanley Cup hangover is no myth,” Burke said. “We studied that. I talked with (Carolina GM) Jimmy Rutherford, (Tampa Bay GM) Jay Feaster and (New Jersey GM) Lou Lamoriello and asked them how we guard against the hangover.
“Rutherford just laughed at me. He said, ‘You don’t.’ He told me, ‘Your players climbed Mount Everest for you and you can’t expect them to come back the same way they were. They played late in the year, they gave up a lot and preparation for the next season in the summer was not their No. 1 priority.’”
Added hard-working winger Chris Kunitz: “It’s a really long season with a long, hard-fought playoff and it can wear on you.
“It’s not something we talked a lot about at the beginning of the year. What’s really tough is, you’re celebrating your win all summer and when you start playing again, everybody is gunning for you. You go into a building that you are used to winning in and the other team is sitting there waiting for you, gunning for the champ.”
Plus, Anaheim was without two of its key components (top scorer Teemu Selanne and Conn Smythe Trophy winner Scott Niedermayer flirted with retirement) as well as second-leading goal-scorer Dustin Penner (the restricted free agent signed an Oilers’ offer sheet), so it’s easy to see why the Ducks waddled out of the gate.
Not one to sit on his hands, Burke countered losing Selanne and Niedermayer by signing veterans Todd Bertuzzi – a gamble given the big winger’s recent injury and very distracting legal woes – and defenseman Mathieu Schneider.
Injuries also hampered the Ducks. At various times, Schneider, Bertuzzi, goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere and checking center Samuel Pahlsson missed significant time.
Through it all, Burke said he had a game plan. He wasn’t about to go into panic mode just because his team started slowly. Rather, he wanted to see exactly what he had on his hands before reacting.
“Our view was we’d give them 20 games and if these guys couldn’t get it done, we’d start shuffling the deck,” Burke said. “We were actually in eighth place (in the West) after 20 games, but all the teams behind us had games in hand.”
So, like a Las Vegas dealer, Burke started to shuffle.
“We may still miss the playoffs,” he said, “but to sit back and watch the car wreck happen wasn’t acceptable.”
Through a series of trades and waiver-wire moves, the Ducks lost backup goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, defenseman Shane Hnidy (signed as a free agent in the off-season), Andy McDonald, Mark Mowers and Maxim Kondratiev, while gaining forwards Doug Weight from St. Louis, Brian Sutherby from Washington and Brandon Bochenski from Boston.
The biggest boon, however, came in mid-December when Niedermayer came back to the team.
Burke insists he didn’t know Niedermayer would be back and that’s why he signed Schneider. Though it meant having to trade McDonald to make cap room for the future Hall of Famer, Burke was happy to oblige. And now comes word that Selanne has begun skating. Could another comeback be in the works?
Burke said he can do nothing more than wait for Selanne to make a decision.
“Scotty (retiring) surprised me because he was on a four-year deal,” Burke said. “I didn’t even contemplate the possibility. Teemu, when I hugged him on the ice the night we won it, I thought he was going to retire right there.
“I still have no sense of what Teemu is going to do. I know he has really enjoyed life without hockey. Obviously, the fact he is skating is a positive for us.”
With each passing day, the Ducks look more and more like a team that will take a serious shot at repeating. Anaheim was 15-15-4 without Niedermayer, then went 10-2-2 in his first 14 games back.
The “retirement” of Selanne and eventual trading of McDonald caused Anaheim to fast-track the development of third-year forwards Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry; fortunately, the pair have responded favorably. Through 46 games, Getzlaf was averaging 19:17 in ice time and led the team in scoring with 18 goals and 46 points; he also was selected to play in the All-Star Game. Perry led the Ducks in goals with 24 and was second in points with 40, while his ice time increased to 18:10 from 12:28 last season.
“I think (coach) Randy Carlyle deserves a lot of credit for that,” Burke said. “But I also think, and they may disagree with me, the time (Getzlaf and Perry) spent in the American League in their rookie year really made a huge difference. It prevented any arrogance and kept their feet on the ground. Some guys, if you rush them into the spotlight, they don’t feel they earned it. The time they spent with (coach) Kevin Dineen in the minors was very valuable.”
And while Bertuzzi struggled in the first half, largely due to a concussion, he has shown signs of being a significant power forward once again since being put on a line with the kids.
Weight, who appeared to be winding down his career in St. Louis after winning the Cup as a rental player with Carolina two years ago, had four goals and eight points in his first 14 games with the Ducks. Not bad.
Of course, the real strength of the Ducks is the blue line. Besides Niedermayer – the 2004 Norris Trophy winner as the NHL’s best defenseman and a three-time first-team all-star – you have menacing Chris Pronger, fifth among league D-men in points with 34; Schneider; minutemuncher Francois Beauchemin; and, veteran Sean O’Donnell.
On top of that, the Ducks also boast one of the league’s best shutdown lines in Rob Niedermayer, Pahlsson and Travis Moen.
“It all starts defensively for our team,” Kunitz said. “We have a corps back there that can all skate, move the puck, play the power play and kill penalties. And we have a goaltender that plays well in our system, he’s in position to make the saves and doesn’t let many weak goals in.”
Schneider said the Ducks remind him very much of the team that beat out his Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference final a year ago.
“Last year they were a very hard team to play against,” Schneider said. “The size and strength they had, especially up front, made it difficult to play against them. We were a little inconsistent at the start of the season, but I think that was largely due to changes in personnel. Obviously the way Bertuzzi has played lately has made a huge difference for us. You can really see him starting to be comfortable and he’s doing the things that made him such a great player in Vancouver.”
While the Ducks have made numerous changes, one thing they didn’t tinker with is their style. They still play old-time hockey and led the NHL in penalty minutes with 890 (Philadelphia was second with 835) and fighting majors with 40 (the Flyers and Calgary had 37 apiece).
Burke takes a lot of pride in his team’s turnaround, and also with the way the players have conducted themselves in troubled times.
“We had a real serious injury situation we’ve had to contend with, too,” Burke said. “I don’t think it was until the 10th game that we had less that $12 million sitting in the press box. We started without Giguere and Pahlsson. If you go back and read the clips, you’ll notice we never complained. Our organizational motto is: No complaints, no excuses. Because really, all a complaint is, is an excuse. We could say, ‘We had tough travel this week.’ That’s an excuse for losing. ‘The ice was bad.’ That’s just another excuse. No complaints, no excuses. We know the travel is tough…your job is to win anyway.”
If Selanne returns, and it looks like he will, you could make the case the Ducks are even stronger this season than they were last year.
“I don’t know what took us so long, but I think we have turned the corner,” Kunitz said.
Beware the mighty Ducks.
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