Anaheim Ducks

There's some good news and some bad news for Ryan Kesler on Friday.

The good news: Kesler has been traded from the tailspinning Vancouver Canucks to the Anaheim Ducks, turning a very good team into one that is a legitimate contender for a Stanley Cup in 2014-15.

The bad news: Kesler has to wear the new Ducks jerseys, ones that look like they were created by someone with a debilitating vision disease that has yet to be diagnosed.

Fashion problems aside, the Ducks did very well to land a big, productive No. 2 center behind Ryan Getzlaf and a 2015 third-round pick without giving up top-flight assets in return.

The Ducks parted ways with the No. 24 pick in the 2014 draft, scheduled to begin Friday night at Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, and maintained the No. 10 pick, acquired from the Ottawa Senators last year in the Bobby Ryan trade. Center Nick Bonino, defenseman Luca Sbisa and the No. 85 pick also went to Vancouver, making this quite the steal for the Ducks.

With Kesler holding all the power with his no-trade clause, this was the inevitable end for the Canucks once he requested a trade. It could have been a bloody beating out by the sea wall, but instead it was a fair deal, all things considered.

The Ducks, however, get to reap the benefits while weakening a team within their division.

Kesler is 29 years old and at 6'2", 206 pounds, brings the size down the middle required to compete with the Stanley Cup champion Los Angeles Kings, who beat the Ducks in seven games during the second round this year. The Kings' top-three centers are Anze Kopitar (6'3", 224), Jeff Carter (6'4", 212) and Jarret Stoll (6'1", 213), and that beef took its toll against Bonino (6'1", 196) and the Ducks.

Kesler hasn't scored fewer than 25 goals in an 82-game season since 2008-09, and he is coming off a 25-goal, 43-point campaign in 2013-14. His durability will be a question raised by skeptics of the deal, but he played 77 games last season and no fewer than 80 games in an 82-game season since 2007-08. Hip surgery along with foot and hand injuries cost him most of the shortened 2013 season, but he showed he can still play a full season in 2013-14.

Despite having slightly poorer numbers than Bonino last season, Kesler should be an upgrade for the Ducks as their second-line center.

Bonino is only 26 years old, skates like he's powered by rocket fuel and used his speed to have a career best 22-goal, 49-point season. He's also a much better bargain than Kesler, as Bonino has a $1.9 million cap hit for the next three years, while Kesler has a $5 million cap hit over the next two years. But the underlying numbers show Kesler is likely to have a much better season in Anaheim than Bonino had last year if he's deployed the same way.

Using ExtraSkater's helpful comparison tool, Kesler had more zone starts outside the offensive zone and faced a far stronger quality of competition, yet he was a better possession player and didn't enjoy the same level of luck as Bonino, who had a PDO of 103.6. Kesler likely won't be as sheltered as Bonino, but he's capable of a 30-goal season and providing excellent two-way play if things break right in Anaheim.

Sbisa, 24, missed 44 games with an assortment of injuries last season, but he carries the pedigree of being the No. 19 pick in the 2008 draft. He is under team control through 2015-16 and could be a replacement for Jason Garrison, who is rumored to be on the trading block (update: Garrison has now been traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning).

Considering the circumstances, the Canucks did fine for themselves in this trade.

But the Ducks took a big stride toward competing with the Kings by getting bigger and better. Anaheim still has about $20 million in cap space and by acquiring Kesler became a much more attractive destination for the top free agents.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.

All statistics via NHL.com, Extra Skater or CapGeek.

John Gibson is being treated like some sort of anomaly, a unicorn of sorts that has arrived on the scene in Anaheim to offer the Ducks a chance at a magical run to a Stanley Cup.

A second-round pick in 2011 who had played three more NHL games in his career than a box of Junior Mints before the playoffs began, Gibson has been a brick wall in this conference semifinal series with the Los Angeles Kings that will conclude with Game 7 in Anaheim on Friday. In three starts since replacing the injured Frederik Andersen and leapfrogging Jonas Hiller on the depth chart, Gibson is 2-1 with a 1.69/.946 split.

That's not bad for a guy who was playing in the AHL a few weeks ago.

Gibson has been touted as the next great American goaltender since he was drafted, and the 20-year-old's invite to Team USA Olympic orientation camp last summer is a strong indication of what some of the sport's top minds think of him. His time wasn't supposed to be now, but here he is, one win away from an improbable trip to the Western Conference Final.

Well, in reality, this performance by Gibson isn't improbable at all; it's more an extreme case of what has been happening with goaltenders in the NHL since 2005-06.

“Young kids don’t know any better," Ducks winger Corey Perry told Puck Daddy's Greg Wyshynski after Gibson's Game 4 shutout of the Kings in his postseason debut. "They come in and they play the way they’re told to play.”

Practical thinking says for a team to win a Stanley Cup, an experienced, and of course talented, goaltender is required. It usually takes a few years for a young team to learn how to win in the playoffs, grow from defeat, learn from mistakes. Very rarely does a team arrive on the scene out of nowhere and win a championship without absorbing a few painful lessons in the preceding seasons.

That somehow hasn't applied to most goaltenders in recent seasons.

Cam Ward backstopped the Carolina Hurricanes to a Stanley Cup as a rookie in 2006 after playing just 28 regular-season games. He replaced veteran Martin Gerber in the first round and went on to win the Conn Smythe Trophy.

Ray Emery had 45 games of regular-season experience before the 2006-07 season, the year he helped lead the Ottawa Senators to the Stanley Cup Final, although he did get a two-round taste of the postseason in 2006. Antti Niemi split time during the 2009-10 regular season with Cristobal Huet before taking the reins for the Chicago Blackhawks' championship run, which ended with a Game 6 win against Philadelphia Flyers goaltender Michael Leighton, who was in his first postseason.

In 2012, Jonathan Quick was hardly a rookie, but he went up against future Hall of Fame goaltender Martin Brodeur in the finals and got the best of him. Quick had played in 12 postseason games before 2012; Brodeur had played in 181.

Each of those cases is a snowflake, and nothing exactly matches what Gibson is trying to do with the Ducks, but a wealth of experience is hardly a mandatory requirement for a goaltender in search of a Stanley Cup these days.

"He showed [the ability to steal games] in Norfolk this year when teams outshot us like 50-10 and we would still win 1-0," Ducks center Rickard Rakell said to NHL.com's Corey Masisak of the time he spent with Gibson in the AHL. "He's been unbelievable the whole year. I don't think anybody is surprised with what he's shown so far."

Gibson planted the seeds of confidence in Bruce Boudreau during his short stint with the Ducks in the regular season. After an 18-save shutout in his NHL debut, Boudreau went back to Gibson two nights later in a game against the San Jose Sharks with the Pacific Division on the line. Gibson stopped 36 of 38 shots in the Ducks' division-clinching 5-2 victory that served as an unintentional audition for postseason playing time.

"Quite frankly, with the San Jose game to me, which was for first place in the division and really important, he came in as cool as a cucumber," Boudreau said to Masisak. "We thought at that point that we could start him (in Game 1 of the first round). I didn't really want to jump the gun because these two guys (Andersen and Hiller) had been with us the whole year and done a great job. The confidence I have in this young man is great. I knew he was going to do a good job."

Of course, all this talk will become moot if the Ducks lose Game 7 to the Kings, no matter how well Gibson plays. But the one thing that's certain for Anaheim is that the future is bright as long Gibson is between the pipes.

"It's obviously exciting, but we haven't won anything yet," Gibson said to Masisak. "I think we'll be excited if we win. That's the time to celebrate."

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @DaveLozo.

All statistics via NHL.com.

The Anaheim Ducks lost more than defenseman Stephane Robidas when he broke his leg three games into these 2014 Stanley Cup playoffs.

Forget the conditional fourth-round pick the Ducks gave the Dallas Stars to get the soon-to-be unrestricted free agent at the trade deadline.

Forget how that means they essentially also lost forward Dustin Penner—a third of their top line heading into the trade deadline—in the deal by trading away the pick they got in exchange for him.

No, all things considered, what the Ducks really lost was a realistic shot at winning the Stanley Cup.

Before I get into that, first some (kind of) good news: You can probably also forget that conditional fourth reportedly turning into a third should the Ducks win two rounds.

Granted, that’s good news in the same way that a hurricane means you don’t have to go wash your car anymore. You know, because of the rain—and the fact that your car isn’t there anymore.

Joking aside, the possibility of it becoming a third admittedly went out the window along with any chance of Robidas playing in 50 percent of Anaheim’s playoff games. He won’t now that the Ducks are guaranteed to play at least seven in all.

However, the fact is Anaheim was already going to be hard-pressed to reach the Western Conference semifinals, having to eventually beat the winner of the San Jose Sharks-Los Angeles Kings series to get there.

Without one of its better defensemen, it’s much less likely.

Robidas may only have played 17 games with the Ducks (14 in the regular season), but over that stretch, he established himself as a steadying presence on the blue line. He ended the regular season with a Fenwick percentage of 51.9 with Anaheim in five-on-five, close-score situations.

That may not seem impressive, with the Ducks earning just 51.9 percent of unblocked shot attempts with him on the ice.

However, the Ducks essentially broke even in that same category during the regular season (50.2 percent) and currently have a percentage of 45.1 during the playoffs, consistently getting outplayed by those same Stars in the first round.

This was all supposed to make for an intriguing storyline: Robidas getting a chance to play against his old team and lead his new one to victory—and potentially an eventual first career Stanley Cup championship—in the process.

Instead he only got in a few games in before fate got in the last word, with Stars forward Ryan Garbutt taking his legs out from under him in a play for the puck, breaking his right one and effectively ending his season and potentially his career.

It was the same leg he broke in November as a Star, sidelining him for half the season.

With him being 37 and a UFA, one has to wonder just how realistic it is for him to first recuperate it in time for free agency and, more importantly, be offered a new contract for next season. It’s not looking good. It didn’t to begin with.

Cruel twists of fate such as this are nothing new to this franchise, with another former Stars (and Montreal Canadiens) defenseman, Sheldon Souray, having missed the entire season up to this point with a wrist injury.

It must have, at least in part, been Souray’s injury that pushed the Ducks to acquire a veteran defenseman for the stretch run and hopefully a long postseason. Now all that is further in doubt.

That isn’t to say Robidas is the linchpin to a long playoff run, but his poise on the blue line will definitely be missed and his absence there has certainly exposed the weaknesses in Anaheim’s game to a greater degree.

The Ducks are obviously in a good position in this particular series, leading three games to two despite being outshot 155-137 by a wild-card team.

However, one has to seriously question how far these Ducks will be able to get against either the Sharks or Kings—two teams that were in the top three in terms of possession during the regular season.

The Ducks were 15th, for the record, a surprisingly average rank for a division champion. The team has gotten by largely on the strength of league’s highest shooting percentage this season and, again, it opted to move a key component of its offense at the trade deadline essentially just for Robidas.

Now, Robidas is gone.

The same way the Ducks were able to make do without both him and Souray for most of the season, compiling an impressive 45-16-7 prior to Robidas playing his first game as a Duck, they will have to make do right now.

If there’s any team that can do it, it is the Ducks, as they’ve been proving prognosticators wrong all season. In fact, the Ducks were technically better without Robidas (.662 winning percentage) than with him (9-4-1; .642 winning percentage) in the regular season.

However, ask anyone in the organization and they’ll tell you they’d still prefer to have him healthy than have to rely on lucky bounces.

Luck doesn’t get you a championship. Defense does. That’s one popular saying.

Another one is a team has to lose first before it can win. It’s fair to say that, despite their impressive record, the Ducks have lost a great deal up to now. Without Robidas, an already tough task just got a whole lot tougher.

Then again, no one thought winning it all would be easy.

Advanced statistics courtesy of Extra Skater.

Updates with Wednesday, April 23

Eric Stephens of the Orange County Register has the latest on Stephane Robidas:

Updates from Tuesday, April 22

TVA Sports' Renaud Lavoie confirms when Stephane Robidas will undergo surgery:

TVA's Louis Jean added an interesting detail on Robidas:

Original Text

If the Anaheim Ducks are going to make a run at the Stanley Cup, they'll have to do it without Stephane Robidas. 

The veteran defenseman got rolled up underneath Ryan Garbutt early in the second period of Game 3 against the Dallas Stars on Monday night and was forced to limp off the ice. The team's official Twitter feed later confirmed he was on his way to the hospital with a fracture: 

You have to feel for Robidas, who suffered a different fracture on the same leg in November while playing for Dallas and will now be lost for the entire postseason. 

Coming over from the Stars—where he spent 10-plus seasons—in March, Robidas provided a nice spark for the Western Conference's best team. Five points in 14 regular-season games may not seem like much, but the 37-year-old provided a strong shot from the blue line, added some bruising toughness and was logging over 20 minutes per game on the ice. 

“Like I said before, my plan was to come here and try to help the team,” he said in April, via the Orange County Register's Eric Stephens. “I’m not the savior. And I just want to be a part of the puzzle and try to win hockey games. That’s what I’m here for."

He added: “My legs feel good. I feel like I’m 25 again."

Alas, the Ducks, who are up two games to one after a loss on Monday night, will have to rally around their veteran. 

As one of the NHL's best teams, they are certainly capable of doing just that, but this is the kind of thing you never want to see. 

The Anaheim Ducks entered the season with perhaps the richest goaltending pipeline in the NHL. Veterans Jonas Hiller and Viktor Fasth were, respectively, an established starter and a legitimate candidate for a starting role, and AHL prospects Frederik Andersen and John Gibson are two of the best young goaltenders in hockey today.

Even with the trade-deadline departure of Fasth, necessitated by the presence of Andersen and Gibson, the Ducks have an abundance of riches. Lately, though, that abundance of riches has turned into a conundrum because it isn’t at all clear which of the team’s three goalies should start in net for Game 1 of Anaheim’s first-round series against the Dallas Stars.

Hiller would seem the logical choice, an established starter who has been battle-tested in both the NHL regular season and the playoffs and has proven his mettle in both. The trouble is that his save percentage in the majors this season is the lowest of the three, and he’s been especially bad of late: In his last 10 games the Ducks have gone 3-4-3, and Hiller has managed a 0.865 save percentage.

Andersen’s been better of late and over the season as a whole, but he only has 28 games of experience under his belt. Additionally, while he’s well-regarded, Gibson is the player who seems to be the consensus choice to ultimately emerge as the team’s best goalie. Clouding the picture further is that Andersen has only recently returned from an upper-body injury that necessitated playing time for Gibson. 

For his part, Gibson’s been brilliant, with a 0.954 save percentage in the three NHL games he played in place of Andersen, the only three games of his career.

So who will Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau choose? He hasn’t made his decision public yet, but on Monday the L.A. Times’ Lance Pugmire reported what was known:

Ducks Coach Bruce Boudreau said he expects to finalize his decision about who will start Game 1 by Tuesday, and it probably will be 20-win rookie Frederik Andersen, who beat the Kings on Saturday.

If Andersen is Boudreau’s choice, is that the best call?

The easiest part of this decision is the choice between Andersen and Gibson, so that’s a logical place for us to start. Both players have spent much of the last two seasons with Anaheim’s AHL affiliate in Norfolk, Va., so a comparison between the two is easy to make:

Andersen, the oldest of the pair, has been the better goaltender in the AHL. That should be enough to cement his status over Gibson heading into the postseason, because three stellar NHL games by the younger prospect simply don’t represent enough evidence to counter the established AHL pattern.

That leaves a choice then between Hiller and Andersen, which is a tougher one given Hiller’s established level of ability and the simple fact that Andersen’s NHL track record is less than 30 games.

Here it would be extremely helpful if we could compare NHL and AHL save percentages, and thanks to Stephan Cooper’s work at Habs Eyes on the Prize, we can. Cooper found that, on average, an AHL goalie can expect to lose seven points off his save percentage when he makes the jump to the majors. Naturally, there is a lot of fluctuation at the individual level, but that’s the broad trend. Does that fit with what we find with Andersen?

It does. We’re still dealing with a sample size of less than 3,000 shots, which isn’t ideal, but both his AHL and NHL work point to a 0.923 save percentage. How does that compare with Hiller’s recent work?

In a way, Hiller’s late-season struggles might be a blessing in disguise for the Ducks. There’s a very real possibility that at this stage in their respective careers Andersen is the superior goaltender, and the collapse of Hiller’s game opened the door for a change between the pipes.

If the Ducks opt to start Andersen against Dallas to open their first-round series they will be choosing the goaltender who, based on the evidence, gives them the best chance at winning the game.

For more by Jonathan Willis, follow him on Twitter. 

The Anaheim Ducks picked up a huge 5-2 win over the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday, clinching both the Pacific Division and the highest points total in franchise history, per the team's official Twitter account.

The Ducks entered the game with 110 points through 79 games, while the Sharks came in with 107 through 79. Had the Sharks won, they'd trail the Ducks by just one point in the Pacific Division standings with two games left to play.

But, that didn't happen as the Ducks stood up tall behind 20-year-old goaltender John Gibson, who was making his second career NHL appearance after shutting out the Vancouver Canucks on Monday.

Gibson, a top goaltending prospect, turned in another fine performance Wednesday night, stopping 36 of the 38 shots he faced against one of the league's more talented teams.

Buoyed by Gibson's netminding and a pair of Patrick Maroon marks, the Ducks turned a close game into a blowout, scoring the final three goals of the night in a game that was tied 2-2 midway through the second period.

In winning the game, Anaheim not only clinched the highest points total in team history but also broke a franchise record for most goals in a season with 259 through 80 games (3.2 goals per game). The previous record-holding team, the 2006-07 Ducks, scored 258 regular-season goals on the way to a Stanley Cup championship.

This year's Ducks hope to meet the same fate but will have to fight their way through a stacked Western Conference. The reward for a record-setting season will likely be a first-round matchup with either Anze Kopitar's Los Angeles Kings or Zach Parise's Minnesota Wild.

The Anaheim Ducks were hit with a dose of bad news Wednesday—the team announced that an MRI revealed defenseman Cam Fowler will miss three to five weeks with a sprained medial collateral ligament in his left knee.

It's a tough blow for the Ducks, who will have to hold off the hard-charging San Jose Sharks for first place in the Pacific Division without their best defenseman. If Fowler's recovery requires the full five weeks, he may not be around for the first round of the postseason.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Ducks and Sharks are tied with 97 points, but the Ducks hold the top spot in the division because they have played one fewer game than the Sharks. There is no divisional race in the league that carries anywhere near the importance of this Ducks-Sharks battle, as the loser will draw the Los Angeles Kings in the first round; the winner will get a wild-card team, which is likely to be the Minnesota Wild, Phoenix Coyotes or Dallas Stars.

A three-week absence by Fowler could be the difference between a far easier first-round matchup that catapults the Ducks to a Stanley Cup and a deadly first-round matchup that sends the Ducks home early for a second straight season.

Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry are the headline grabbers in Anaheim, but Fowler could be the most valuable player for the Ducks this season.

Fowler has 36 points (six goals) in 67 games, fourth most on the Ducks and the most among their defensemen. He averages nearly 24 minutes per game, most on the team, and is a key facet on both the power play and the penalty kill. The 22-year-old is the rare offensive defenseman who can handle businesses in his own end, and even with Stephane Robidas now in the fold, there's just no replacing someone of Fowler's caliber.

When it comes time to line up against the opponent's best players, it's usually Fowler who draws the assignment. According to Extra Skater, Fowler and Ben Lovejoy face the toughest competition among Ducks defensemen. He's fourth on the team in defensive zone starts, but he's far from being a sheltered defenseman.

The loss of Fowler also comes at a time when the Ducks are scuffling something awful on the power play. They are 1-of-34 with the extra man since returning from the Olympic break and 4-3-2 overall in those games. The penalty kill has also been a disaster as of late, allowing eight goals in 20 chances over the past six games.

With two pivotal matchups against the Sharks, over the final three weeks, including a game in San Jose on Thursday, the loss of Fowler could be devastating.

The news on Fowler could have been far worse, and it's not as though the Ducks are on the fringe of the playoff chase. But elite teams that fancy themselves Stanley Cup contenders need a bit of luck when it comes to injuries, and this is bad luck for the Ducks right now.

If the Ducks find themselves shaking hands after a five-game loss to the Kings in April, the loss could be traced back to Fowler's injury.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.