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Ducks wasting some of Gibson's prime goaltending seasons |
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John Gibson has been a menacing beast in the Anaheim Ducks' net in the opening two weeks of the 2020-21 NHL season. He’s ruthlessly swallowing up shots and killing scoring chances.
Right now, he is the NHL’s most dominant goalie.
He boasts a 1.67 goals-against average and .948 save percentage. He owns an aura of confidence mixed with near invincibility.
And his talents are being wasted. He’s 27, in the prime of his career, and his team is irrelevant because it can’t score goals.
The Ducks have netted 12 goals in seven games. They haven’t scored a power play goal yet this season. They sit dead last in the NHL with a scoring rate of 1.71 goals per game.
Most teams go through seasons when the net becomes hard to find. But if the Ducks stay near the bottom of the goals-scored list this season, this will mark the third consecutive season in which Gibson’s strong play has been rendered useless by the Ducks' impotent offense.
Anaheim was 29th last season with 2.56 goals-per-game average, and 31st the season before at 2.39 goals-per-game.
What’s happening in Anaheim would be like a MLB having a Cy Young winner in his prime and having the worst league’s lowest run-scoring team.
If we agree that age 24 to 30 is a goalie’s prime years, we can say the Ducks are on their way to wasting the fourth season of Gibson's prime.
Even back in 2017-18, Ducks werel a below-average offensive team, ranking at 19th 2.82 goals per game.
The Ducks simply aren’t giving Gibson enough run support. Gibson showed a 31-18-7 record in 2017-18. He boasts a .919 career save percentage. How many more games would Gibson have won with reasonable goal support?
General Manager Bob Murray was listed as a contender in the Pierre-Luc Dubois Sweepstakes, but the Jets ended up with the Columbus center.
Did the Ducks go after Taylor Hall in the offseason? Were the Ducks in on Mike Hoffman? Probably Hall wouldn’t have considered Anaheim. Not a lot of scorers were available this offseason, but there were some that could have helped the Ducks. The addition of puck-moving defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk could be viewed as a move to help the offense.
But the Ducks needed to do more than they did this offseason. Adding 20 to 25 goals would have helped. Surely they could have done more to improve the power play. They ranked 30th last season, and 24th the season before. It’s getting worse, not improving.
Maybe prize prospect Trevor Zegras isn’t ready, but I would have given him games to show what he could do.
I’m not sure what Anaheim’s plan was for improving their offense, but whatever it was, it doesn’t seem to be working. They need to do something now if they want to stop wasting some of the prime of Gibson’s career.
Blogger •HHOF Writer's column on the NHL • 
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