3 questions facing Anaheim Ducks

NHL.com is providing in-depth analysis for each of its 32 teams from Aug. 1-Sept. 1. Today, three important questions facing the Anaheim Ducks.

1. What impact will new coach Greg Cronin have?

Hired on June 5 to replace Dallas Eakins, who was fired on April 14, this will be Cronin's first head coaching job in the NHL after he spent the past five seasons as coach of Colorado in the American Hockey League, an affiliate of the Colorado Avalanche. The 60-year-old inherits a team that ranked 31st in goals per game (2.51), last in goals against per game (4.09), and 31st on the power play (15.7 percent) and penalty kill (72.1 percent) last season and has not qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2017-18.

"At this particular moment with the Ducks, there's a real influx of new talent coming in and my skill set as a coach would mesh really well with what (general manager) Pat (Verbeek) is trying to do here in terms of building a championship team," Cronin said. "You've got to have a healthy balance, but it starts with your habits, and if your practice habits aren't good, they're going to follow you right into the game."

Cronin was an NHL assistant coach for 12 seasons with the Toronto Maple Leafs and New York Islanders, coached New York's AHL affiliate in Bridgeport, Connecticut, from 2003-05, and coached Northeastern University for six seasons (2005-11).

2. Where will the offense come from?

The 206 goals scored by the Ducks last season were 31st in the NHL, ahead of only the Chicago Blackhawks (202). In the past five seasons, Anaheim has ranked no higher than 24th in goals scored. Four players scored at least 20 goals last season (Trevor Zegras, 23; Troy Terry, 23; Frank Vatrano, 22; Adam Henrique, 22), but Anaheim lacks a legitimate goal-scoring threat, and did not acquire one in the offseason. Alex Killorn, who signed a four-year contract on July 1, set an NHL career high in goals last season (27), but is unlikely to match or exceed that total again on a struggling offense.

"Scoring is the most coveted skill, right?" Cronin said. "Guys that score goals get paid the most for a reason. They impact the most. In the absence of having a natural goal-scorer, you've got to have community scoring, team scoring. … So we've got to try and design a system that's going to invite that team scoring mentality, and I have some ideas, but there's some things that we need to do to recruit more scoring into our team because we're not going to win a lot of games if we score at the rate we scored last year."

3. Will they name a captain?

Anaheim has not had a captain since Ryan Getzlaf retired following the 2021-22 season. He spent 17 seasons with the Ducks and is their leader in games (1,157), points (1,019) and assists (737). Getzlaf was captain for 12 seasons (2010-22) and was one of 12 players in NHL history to be captain of the same team for at least 10 seasons and get 1,000 points with that team.

If they were to name a captain, potential candidates would likely include defenseman Cam Fowler, who is the longest-tenured player on the team (13 seasons), and forwards Adam Henrique, Jakob Silfverberg and Trevor Zegras.

"We're going to try and come out of training camp and get a sense of what roles guys are going to play and eventually somebody will emerge as a natural leader," Cronin said. "You can't push that on people. It's got to be something that that the leader really has got to be good at. … So we'll see how that plays out. And somebody will emerge, I'm sure after training camp."