As a talented team which ended up falling short of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Anaheim Ducks enter the offseason in somewhat of a holding pattern while waiting to see if the careers of two veterans will be coming to an end. Will 36-year-old defender Scott Niedermayer and 39-year-old winger Teemu Selanne make themselves available to the Ducks for the 2010-11 NHL season or will one or both stars be calling it quits?
After having played in only 48 games after his failed first retirement attempt in 2007-08, Niedermayer has appeared in 162 of 164 regular season games – scoring 24 goals and 83 assists while still averaging over 26 minutes a night – over the past two years and, even with his play declining a bit, the crafty vet maintains a workhorse attitude. If he does make the decision to return to Anaheim next season, it will undoubtedly ease some concerns the Ducks might otherwise have to address during the summer.
Of course, the Anaheim Ducks could try to add more proven veterans to the defense, but it definitely provides a competitive edge anytime a team can get a top-notch player to keep playing, especially when it may even be at a discounted price that player is happy and content with his current situation rather moving elsewhere for a little more money.
This theory is definitely in play when discussing Selanne, who earned a modest $2 million last season, while scoring 27 goals and 21 assists (Anaheim's fifth-leading scorer – tied, coincidentally, with Niedermayer at 48 points) in 54 games for the Ducks. Selanne has been heard to say that this past injury-marred season might be the last of his Hall of Fame career, but then also contradicting those statements by saying how much fun he had playing over the final two months of the season.
If Selanne and Niedermayer are in the mix next year, the Anaheim Ducks should have the personnel to be a playoff team; possibly in need of a little help on defensive, but still more than skilled enough to get by and make it into postseason play.
Outside of these valuable veterans, the Ducks do have quite an impressive group of talented youngsters – all 25 or younger – led by leading scorer Corey Perry (76 points), leading goal-scorer Bobby Ryan (35 goals), and leading assist man Ryan Getzlaf (50 assists), which should make it relatively easy to plug in the necessary role players to squash the memory of the franchise's first time missing the playoffs since the NHL lockout year.
Conversely, if Niedermayer and Selanne do make the choice retire, that could force the team into a more serious rebuilding phase – still anchored by their nucleus of young talent, but then more focused on up-and-coming young players already within the organization and what they may offer for the future. Either way, this should be a team ready to compete to make the postseason, which means you should plan on getting some Anaheim Ducks tickets and settling into the Honda Center for some exciting NHL play in 2010-11.
