· 6 years ago · Feb 05, 2019, 06:58 PM
1It’s an absolute mess in Anaheim, so when will more changes happen?
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4By Eric Stephens 46m ago 3
5TORONTO – “Am I ready? Am I ready? Am I ready?â€
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7Randy Carlyle repeated that question thrown to him Monday morning as he walked through the visitors dressing room at Scotiabank Arena toward a hallway with a media horde full of familiar faces waiting for him. And the situation he is currently in, the setting surely felt all too familiar.
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9Carlyle managed quite a few smiles in what was a mostly pleasant question-and-answer session with interrogators he used to spar and commiserate with daily. He had to put on a brave face as his shattered Ducks continued to sink toward depths perhaps not seen in the entire history of the franchise. And there is some history now. Twenty-five years make it so.
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11The winningest coach in the team’s history that is now presiding over the worst stretch of hockey that’s been produced in Anaheim couldn’t be dour in Toronto. At least not after the morning skate. Not when things around the Ducks seem eerily similar to four years ago and the end of his reign behind the Maple Leafs bench. If not worse.
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13His team was coming off a 9-3 demolition in Winnipeg. His team became the third outfit in Ducks history to allow that many goals in a game. His team had lost for the 15th time in its last 17 trips to the ice. And he is still the coach, perhaps amazingly so. But one must have a stiff upper lip in his position and in times like these.
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15And so Carlyle did. The embarrassing no-show on Saturday – on Hockey Night in Canada, no less – raised the very base issue of compete level from his team that’s been bad in every single aspect of the game.
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17“You don’t even have a starting point,†he said. “If you’re not going to be competitive and you’re not going to win for the inside and not going to win your races to the puck, not going to win your one-on-one battles, the opposition’s going to have the puck. That’s where we have to start.â€
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19To follow that, I asked Carlyle if he has had to discuss compete level with his team more often than he’s ever wanted. He paused. “Yes,†he said, an admission that was blunt and damning.
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21Before his coach got in front of television cameras and tape recorders, Ryan Getzlaf revealed that the Ducks had another air-it-out group session Sunday. Players who keep their gripes more to themselves were encouraged to participate in the open forum. This was a meeting where he did more listening and was pleased to see others take the floor.
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23“When you’re in a locker room, if you always have one or two guys talking, the message gets old,†Getzlaf said. “It’s the same as a coach. If the coach is delivering the same message all the time, eventually guys tune it out. You have to get a feel for what everybody needs, and everybody wants. And not be afraid to ask the questions that the guy next to you is probably thinking too. He just won’t say it.â€
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25The captain pointed out that words don’t matter much if they aren’t followed by the right actions, citing how he’s been “doing the same interview for a month now after every game.†But the Ducks supposedly emerged from their latest meeting feeling as if they cleansed themselves before taking the ice for an energetic workout.
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27“I thought our practice was upbeat and going the way we wanted it to,†he said.
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29Rickard Rakell felt better. Felt good about their chances in Monday night’s game against the Leafs. Hours later after a 6-1 defeat where the game and the score seemed like an eventuality, Rakell sat in a mostly empty and pin-drop quiet visitors dressing room. His mood was as you would predict, with his team now dropping 16 of 18.
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31“This sucks,†said the winger, who managed the only goal after the Ducks started the third period down 3-0. “I’d rather not talk at all. It’s the same thing over and over again. It’s just sad.â€
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33This is beyond a team being in a bad way. What you have to be ready for is the simple fact that the Ducks are the worst team in the NHL right now. The record might not state that and they’re conceivably still within striking range of a playoff spot, sitting just three points behind Vancouver for the second wild-card berth in the Western Conference. But all that is pure illusion.
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35They’ve gone from 19-11-5 to 21-23-9 in six weeks. Since getting back-to-back win to snap their franchise-worst 12-game losing streak, Anaheim has dropped four straight and been outscored a shockingly bad 23-5 over that. They haven’t come close to scratching out a point and wouldn’t deserve one given how poorly they play. The minus-44 goal differential is the league’s worst by seven. They don’t score (31st at 2.28 goals per game), create fewer opportunities to do so (31st at 27.1 shots on goal), allow too many chances (29th at 34.2 shots) and now give up too many goals (21st at 3.13 per game). And they are failing by every way possible – the eye test, the hard data, the underlying numbers. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
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37In a word, they’re just bad. And it is good that we’re finding this out now.
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39Some wins to mask what this team really is and keep the illusion that it might be playoff-worthy won’t help. Bob Murray, the decade-long general manager that’s feeling more heat from an increasingly grumbling fan base, is not on the road trip. But he is watching this. He has no delusion of grandeur. If he thought this season was saving, he might have gone with some of the talented kids that are their future to help out with the now. He’s doing the right thing in keeping them away from this gloomy atmosphere.
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41And he wants to see how this current madness play out. There won’t be any buying at the Feb. 25 trade deadline. Little can be done now about the massive contracts to Getzlaf, Corey Perry and Ryan Kesler and you can either criticize Murray for those that now hamper their flexibility to make necessary moves or see they needed to lock those cornerstones up and take their shots at the Cup in the first few years of the deals. Getzlaf would be the only one of the three that would draw interest right now but he, like the other two, has a full no-movement clause and has long expressed a desire to retire with Anaheim.
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43There is responsible two-way winger Jakob Silfverberg, the pending unrestricted free agent that Murray feels is more part of the solution and wants to re-sign even if he is also the asset that would fetch the best return out of the players whose contracts will be up. But there’s a new feeling that’s emerging, which might have been unthinkable at one point.
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45Does he start to consider whether to break up the core that was supposed to take this franchise forward?
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47It appears that is on the table for discussion. When he talked about trading longtime winger Andrew Cogliano, Murray took aim at “some of our mid-20s guys†on the roster that he has taken great pains to secure for multiple years. It wasn’t hard to see he was talking about players like Rakell. Cam Fowler. Hampus Lindholm. Josh Manson. Brandon Montour. Ondrej Kase, although he’s now out for the season. Perhaps Nick Ritchie as well. If this team was to contend in future years, it would be ultimately be on their backs.
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49The schedule going forward may now be a sort of referendum on them and how they, who — other than Fowler in 2011-12 — have never come close to experiencing this type of losing, will react to it. Will they step up and show they’re part of the solution in 2019-20 and beyond? Will they force the executive to consider changing out some notable pieces to bring in some potential bedrocks to spark a real change in the mix? A “hockey deal†that he’s always preferred doing than just purely selling for picks and prospects. (By the way, Montreal GM Marc Bergevin was hanging out in the press box with some of the Ducks’ brass. Bergevin and Murray are longtime friends dating to their time as teammates on the blueline in Chicago.)
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51“Losing is no fun but sometimes you have to take a step back and just watch and evaluate,†Murray told The Athletic on Monday night.
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53This year? It’s done. Murray might as well have stopped off at a post office and stuck this one in the mail. The thing with that is there are still 29 games left to play and with every loss – which don’t seem to be any less humiliating as we go – comes the increasing temptation to mentally check out.
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55Before the game, Getzlaf addressed that.
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57“It’s huge,†the center said. “That’s part of it. When you go through such a big stretch like this, it’s making sure that everybody’s still on board and understands what it takes to do that to turn it around. Understand that we’re still only three points out of a spot right now. We got to go on a little run here obviously in the last half. We’re quite capable of doing that.â€
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59After the game, Manson addressed that.
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61“Oh, I don’t think that should ever happen,†said the defenseman, who was finally put back with Lindholm as a regular partner in Game 53 after the two once flourished together. “If guys are checking out, then that’s not the right attitude to have for sure. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how you handle guys checking out. Because it just shouldn’t happen.
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63“They should be bought-in for the whole year. The way that the guys in this room when the chips are down is going to show a lot about every single one of our players’ character.â€
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65The Ducks heeded Carlyle’s call by competing better Monday, but they had set a low bar in Winnipeg. They emerged from the first period scoreless after giving up a ridiculous six to the Jets in the opening stanza. But some things didn’t change.
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67They were still dreadful offensively, with many possessions ending in one shot and out when they did manage to keep the puck away from the Leafs. Frederik Andersen, their former co-No. 1 in net before John Gibson was handed the role, stoned Fowler and others on their few great chances. And there were the usual defensive blunders. Fowler and Montour put up token resistance when William Nylander hit the Anaheim blueline with speed and set up Connor Brown for an easy punch-in without a price paid.
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69The well of defeat that the Ducks are stuck in is baffling to Andersen.
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71“I’ve seen it from way out here,†said Andersen, who won the William M. Jennings Trophy with Gibson for the fewest goals against in 2015-16. “It seems like they have a lot of good pieces. They still have a lot of the D-corps that I was there with, which I think are some great players. Great leaders. Getzy. Kes is there still. Pears obviously coming back in. Gibby in net.
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73“It seems like they have quite a bit. I think it just tells you how hard it can be to sustain being up there. Being in the mix and being in that battle for the division and the playoffs year after year. I think that’s what it is.â€
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75It was another game where Gibson eventually withered after making highlight-reel stops seconds into the game and throughout the opening period. Carlyle pulled the besieged Gibson for the third straight game and Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston reported that the netminder didn’t return after the third-period hook to watch the game finished by backup Chad Johnson.
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78Chris Johnston
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80@reporterchris
81 John Gibson went straight down the tunnel after getting pulled and still hasn't returned to the Ducks bench about 10 minutes later.
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87Gibson, who is clearly frustrated, can’t stop everything and hasn’t. Carlyle acknowledged that the toll is getting to him. He cited an example of fatigue in Jake Muzzin’s power play one-time blast right at the end of the second period where he saw the goalie wasn’t playing out in front of the crease as he normally does. A season in which he was carrying his team with Vezina-worthy work at the start has been wasted, with his coach and teammates being among the guilty parties.
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89“It’s hard on everybody,†Carlyle said. “This is not an easy time. This is not fun. We’re in a situation here where we’re clawing and we’re desperate and we’re not getting anything. There’s no reward for any work we put in right now. And that’s just the tough part of pro sports.â€
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91Rakell let out some of his frustration. The suggestions coming from his coach about their lack of necessary compete level wasn’t particularly accepted. “There’s nobody in our locker room that’s not trying,†he said. “We’re working really hard. But it feels like that’s the only thing we’re doing.â€
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93The 25-year-old that broke in during Anaheim’s run of five straight Pacific Division titles sees a group that’s more worried about making mistakes and in dire need of confidence. “But I don’t think there’s anybody in here that’s not competing,†Rakell said. … We’re only playing on the boards and playing on the outside and nothing’s happening. It’s frustrating.â€
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95Asked pointedly if this team was still fighting for each other, Manson said, “When we came in after that second period, we were rallying in here. It was an upbeat room. We had positive things to say. We were ready to go out there and do the right thing and build on the good things that we do. We knew we just had to get one. We went out and we did that.
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97“And then the rest of the game … but our mentality going into the period – we didn’t give up. We were in a good spot. The score wasn’t where we wanted it to (be). But our guys, I like the way we handled in the room.â€
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99The hard, cold fact is the Ducks are in need of major changes. Part of that could have been firing Carlyle earlier but that move obviously wasn’t made. But it really doesn’t matter whether he is let go now or given the parting gift of an organizational role at the end of the year. Murray is the overseer in this, and his extension is proof he’s got ownership backing in what could be a necessary (and, if you will, overdue) reconstruction. Any glimmer of hope now appears to rest with more losing and bettering the chance to move into the top five of this June’s draft. It would be a rare position for a franchise that’s used to being competitive.
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101The players? They just look lost.
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103“It’s really tough for us,†Rakell said. “We’re going through this every day. It’s not all in games. It’s practice too. We’re working hard and trying to figure out a way to get out of this mess. It’s just tough. You’re trying to regroup, and you have a good feeling before every game.
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105“Tonight, I had a good feeling we’re going to play well. Now I sit here after the game and it’s 6-1. Last game, 9-3. So, it sucks. It’s awful.â€
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107It is an absolute mess in Anaheim. And all we are left to do is watch it play out.