Anaheim Ducks: Progress Report through first 10 games

Offense: C

I’m going to give the Ducks a ‘C’ here because while they have scored enough goals to win a fair share of games, they also haven’t scored enough to win games they should have won, much less at least earn a point on.

The Ducks have scored only 24 goals through 10 games, at a clip of 2.4 goals per game. That’s currently ranked 27th in the league. That’s not going to get it done. The average goals per game in the league is 3.0 goals per game.

What’s more alarming is when you breakdown where the goals are coming from. The 2nd line of Jakob Silfverberg (5), Adam Henrique (5) and Rickard Rakell (3) have scored over half of the team’s goals. The only two other players with multiple goals are Getzlaf (2) and defenseman Cam Fowler (2).

The team needs more players to step up and contribute more to the score sheet. Ducks’ winger Ondrej Kase, expected to take another step forward this season only has one goal. The young four forwards who made the team – Troy Terry, Max Jones, Sam Steel, and Maxime Comtois – only have one goal amongst the four of them. I expected much more from them.

They have a lot more to give.

It’s not like the Ducks are not getting chances to score. I mean, they had multiple chances to score against the Flames last Sunday to tie the game at 2-2, but could not muster a puck past Flames’ goaltender Cam Talbot. The same goes for last Tuesday night’s blowout against the Predators; Kase had a breakaway, Terry had a penalty shot – both missed.

It’s not enough that the Ducks are generating the chances, but they absolutely need to convert on them.

It’s not a shock that Anaheim has struggled to score out of the gate. Notwithstanding the game against the Predators, the first nine games were all very tight, low scoring type games. However, it is a shock to me that the same old players are scoring goals. The young four (excluding Kase) have yet to record a multi-point effort this season.

The Ducks though should have had more players and different players score goals at this point in time. Much more was expected from this team offensively, especially after the infusion of youth into the forward lines. I expect much more from them and the depth players on this team as the season progresses to take some burden off the veteran scorers.