Anaheim, CA—The Anaheim Ducks haven’t made the playoffs in years, though they’ve had an influx of talent of late and certainly have high expectations for their squad. Now, they’ve done what they think is the next logical thing in their progress back to the post-season and maybe, someday, to the Stanley Cup. That move is to hire Joel Quenneville as Head Coach. He was suspended by the league three and a half years ago while working as coach of the Florida Panthers and reinstated by the league last summer.
In Anaheim, a win would be their second, the first coming in 2007 with names like Pronger, Niedermayer (times two—Rob and Scott), Selanne, and Giguere on the roster. If they do it again, it will be at the hands of people like Trevor Zegras, Jackson LaCombe, Mason McTavish, Leo Carlsson, and Cutter Gauthier.
Notice that those are names of players all of whom are 24 or younger. The veteran corps, not to say “core,” of the current Ducks is not the future of this team. That includes Radko Gudas, Frank Vatrano, Alex Killorn, and Ryan Strome.
Not that we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater, nor saying that all of the team’s veterans have to go, but new coach Joel Quenneville was not hired to bring a bunch of experienced players’ games up a level. He was hired to push the youngsters up the mountain like he pushed the Chicago Blackhawks to three Stanley Cup titles, in 2010, 2013, and 2015. At the start of those, stars Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews were 21 and 22, respectively, if I do the math correctly.
The Anaheim team, which mostly flew under the radar this past year despite a significant improvement in points totals over the year prior, is poised if nothing else as a sleeper, and those players mentioned as their young core certainly have achieved nothing like their potential as of yet, not individually, and not as a team.
Why wasn’t Greg Cronin, whose firing made space for the new coach, the one to push them there? I’m not so sure he wasn’t. Despite people whispering that he had lost the confidence of the veterans on the squad, I think that is beside the point. Cronin, like Quenneville, was charged with looking at the future.
Besides that, I thought that Cronin was a very good student of the game. He never answered media questions with cliches, but rather with detailed analysis of the play in question and clear explanations of what he thought would have been a better strategy or reaction to the events being discussed. This seemed to me like the kind of advice that would make a player better, if only he would internalize it. Certainly, this was more interesting and productive than Dallas Eakins’ pop psychology method of discussing the game.
In short, I found Cronin to be a smart hockey mind, and for that reason, I hope he gets another crack at the NHL. Seattle comes to mind as a place that he might someday find a home.
But turning toward the future, is this the perfect place for Quenneville to coach after having been banned from the league for his part in the disastrous events that happened in Chicago fifteen years ago? (I’ll leave it up to you to search for “Chicago Kyle Beach” to fill you in on the background rather than rehash what you like already know.)
In one way, it seems like the far West Coast gives Quenneville the perfect opportunity for redemption because it offers him a chance to get a bit lost. The questions about his part in the events referred to above won’t be addressed on an ongoing basis in Anaheim. There’s a relative paucity of media here compared to what’s in the Northeast or that follows any team in Canada.
Quenneville started the process of leaving the past behind in his introductory press conference, but not quite in the full confessional mode that might have shut down the questions altogether. Rather, he repeated the claim that people in the organization, both in Anaheim and in San Diego, which is where the team’s AHL affiliate is headquartered, would be safe.
This kind of diluted reference to the dark days of the past wasn’t enough for me, for one, and while I don’t plan to confront the coach with those events, I just wanted more. Speculation is that he will be pressed—hard—by the media everywhere the Ducks play over this next year, his first with the Anaheim team. Maybe Anaheim will be his safe place.
So is Quenneville in Anaheim to revive his career or guide the Ducks to their second Stanley Cup? Maybe those are the same thing, but maybe they’re not. “Coach Q” will be the oldest bench boss in the league at 66, and if this attempt fails, despite the fact that it might serve his purposes to be reinstated and leave the past behind, will there be another chance?
Anaheim fans might find that question rankles around in their brains for a while. They will soon forget, though, if they find that Quenneville is pushing the young stars of the team in an upward direction.
