What’s next for the Anaheim Ducks?

With the trade of Trevor Zegras by the Anaheim Ducks to the Philadelphia Flyers, GM Pat Verbeek has $36 million in cap space to play with. He has added veterans to his mix, including Chris Kreider most recently. While some of his restricted free agents need extensions, the Ducks will look to go big game hunting as Bill Pidto, EJ Hradek, and former NHL head coach Bruce Boudreau discussed on NHL Network.

NHLRumors.com Transcriptions

NHL Rumors: Anaheim Ducks, and the New York Rangers

Bill Pidto: “So here’s the situation with the Ducks. They have $36 million in cap space as we get geared up for the off-season, you see the roster scenario, how it breaks down. Of course, they’ve got Chris Kreider, they got him from the Rangers. EJ. Also on the books. They paid Ryan Strome a lot of money. They pay Frank Vatrano, a fair amount of money. They got Jacob Trouba, all former Rangers. It’s interesting how they’ve allocated these resources to these veterans. And they got a lot more money to spend.”

EJ Hradek: “They have money. I mean, some of that you saw Mason McTavish, his name up there, he’s going to get a significant bump, right? I mean, he’s one of the key pieces moving forward for them. They got the goaltender there Lukas Dostal, he is going to get a significant bump. At some point, they’re looking at Leo Carlsson getting a significant bump. They got some really good young players on defense. At some point those guys are going to get more money. They got a lot of good young players there.

The thing though, like Billy, when they added, like they just traded for Chris Kreider a couple of weeks ago, right? Their power play was terrible last year. Chris Kreider can help them on the power play in the short term. He’s on two years left on his I guess, one or two years left on his deal. They take the money, and he can go to the front of that net and help with some of these young players.

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Cutter Gauthier is going to be a star player in this league. He’s going to get paid. All these guys are going to get paid down the road. They’re gearing up to try to make, I think, a big splash for maybe Mitch Marner or high-end free agents. We’ll see if they can land them. But the problem is, you can’t guarantee they’re going to come no matter how much money you offer them, so you get Kreider, or you get some of these other pieces that are under contract already, and they can be part of your team moving forward.”

Bruce Boudreau: “Well, you know what? And Anaheim is a great place to play, and it’s a great place to coach.”

Hradek: “You coached there.”

Boudreau: “I coached there for four and a half years. And the one thing, they’ve got a great practice facility and everything, and but what they need, they’ve missed the playoffs, I think, seven straight years. What they need is they got to make the playoffs. So I think what they don’t have, they got a lot of great young players, and they’ve started to add some really good veterans, now they need that star player.

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And I mean, I think, I think they’re going to go after one of them with $36 million to spend, even though some of their players are going to take some of it. They can afford, and Mr. Samueli can afford to spend a little bit of money to make this team better. And I think they will. I think they’re going to go all in right now to say, Okay, we’ve been developing, we’ve been signing young guys, we’ve been doing all of this stuff. It’s time for us to get better.

I think Anaheim is going to be one of the teams that are in. I don’t know if they’ll get them all, but they’re going to be in on an awful lot of the free agents that come out.”

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