Quoting: mytduxfan
Agreed, but you do have an elite 2-way 1C + a wealth of legit goal scoring wingers. Please tell me who on the Ducks is equivalent to ROR? or Schwartz? or Perron?. More importantly though, it is 9 games. I'd give it a little longer before I'd start claiming STL as proof that you don't need good players to be a contender. I'm pretty sure VK will jump you once they catch-up in games played and you're currently king of the weakest division in the league. Doesn't really mean anything when you'll ultimately be facing teams stacked with top-end talent. Your loss of elite talent in Tarasenko to injury and now Pietrangelo to trade is going to hurt you. I mean the former is probably largely the reason why you didn't get past the 1st round of the playoffs last year.
I wouldn't call him elite, he's definitely not playing elite right now. Schenn and Kyrou are playing at more of an elite level than O'Reilly. He's a good presence but this is again where I say we are more of a good depth team Kyle Clifford, and Oskar Sundqvist on the 4th line both have 2 goals, O'Reilly doesn't have a single goal. I'm not saying you don't need good players you do, but you don't need star players. Because ROR, Schwartz, Perron aren't MacKinnon, Draisaitl, Stone, McDavid, Kucherov, Pastrnak, like these guys are lower down the board in their positions.
Ducks I still feel like they have more to offer, because while the team looks garbage. Manson, Lindholm, Fowler, Shattenkirk are no slouches. Rakell, Silfverberg, Henrique while not like amazing players they aren't completely garbage bottom feeder players. John Gibson is still arguably a Top 3 Goaltender in the league regardless of what happened against St.Louis. Troy Terry, Max Jones, Sam Steel, Jamie Drysdale, Trevor Zegras are really good young pieces to build around, so why not completely blow it up with the pieces you do have, get more draft capitol to build that prospect core up, and grow them right (I don't think Dallas Eakins & company is the right staff to grow a prospect group like this) which is why I would say blow up the organization and build it right, because what you had worked for a couple years, but Getzlaf, Perry, Kesler that's the old core and you have to make a transition from old to new. Anaheim isn't doing that right now. It's more they are optimistic on what could happen, and are holding on to the old identity that never found it's way. I personally think that you have a ton of talent in the minors you just need to grow them the right way around the right people. Getzlaf as a Mentor, or maybe even adding him into the organization to grow the team is probably a great step in the right direction of developing skaters.