The Anaheim Ducks hired Joel Quenneville as head coach on May 8, 2025, roughly three and a half weeks after parting ways with Greg Cronin, who had only spent two seasons behind the bench in Anaheim.
Cronin’s Ducks saw a 21-point increase in the standings from year one (59 points) to year two (80 points) despite most traditional and underlying statistics remaining similarly near the bottom of the NHL, leading to the conclusion that much of the improvement was due to the elite goaltending tandem of Lukas Dostal and John Gibson.
General Manager Pat Verbeek seemed to recognize the limitations of Cronin’s upside behind the bench. He made the proactive decision to let Cronin go and bring in former teammate and friend Quenneville, who also happened to be the second-winningest coach in NHL history.
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Quenneville brought with him a mostly new coaching staff, flanked by Jay Woodcroft and Ryan McGill to run the forwards/power play and defense/penalty kill, respectively. With a new coaching staff, four key additions to the roster (Mikael Granlund, Chris Kreider, Ryan Poehling, Petr Mrazek), and the hope for internal growth from the team’s youngest and most talented players, the organization’s goal was and remains to make a real push for the playoffs in 2025-26.
Quenneville entered the preseason as the odds-on favorite to win the Jack Adams Award, opening with a line of +700. At the time, he narrowly edged out Utah Mammoth head coach Andre Tourigny (+750), Montreal Canadiens head coach Martin St. Louis (+900), and Columbus Blue Jackets head coach Dean Evason (+1200).
As of Tuesday, the Ducks hold an 11-3-1 record, are on a league-high seven-game winning streak, and are averaging the most goals scored per game in the NHL (4.13). They’re getting contributions up and down the lineup, from young players like Cutter Gauthier, Mason McTavish, Beckett Sennecke, etc., and veterans like Jacob Trouba, Chris Kreider, Troy Terry, etc., while Leo Carlsson is emerging as a star franchise player and early Hart Trophy candidate.
The Ducks are off to their best start since the 2013-14 season, and Quenneville’s Jack Adams odds have shot up from +700 to +350, remaining the favorite to win the award, ahead of St. Louis (+500), Trouigny (+800), and New Jersey Devils head coach Sheldon Keefe (+750).
Some experts expected the Ducks to take another step in the standings, but few expected or could have thought to predict through 15 games that the Ducks would lead the Pacific Division and sit second among 32 NHL teams in the standings. It seems we’re seeing the real impact of coaching, coupled with the emergence of some truly elite young talent. But how is Quenneville doing it?
Under the Hood
Analytics would suggest the Ducks, despite results, got off to a rocky start, especially defensively, and they outscored their problems early in the year, as they were adjusting to new systems, teammates, and a tough opening schedule that had them on the road for seven of their first nine games.
Since roughly the nine or ten-game mark, the adjustment period seems to be over, a comfort level has set in, and they’re beginning to show the true potential of this roster.
Culture
Quenneville has always been known as a “player’s coach,” but it’s difficult to quantify what that means, exactly. However, an intangible sense of professionalism bleeds into everything surrounding the roster and, from top to bottom, the team is doing its best to level out the highs and lows that come with an 82-game NHL schedule. And that starts with the head coach.
The team has been encouraged to make mistakes early in the season, understanding there was to be an adjustment period with so many aspects having been overhauled. By allowing players to play more freely, especially given the play style they’ve elected to establish, they seem more likely to learn from those mistakes than they would have been had they been immediately reprimanded or punished with lost ice time.
Deployment
In years past, whether Dallas Eakins or Greg Cronin, the Ducks’ head coach would rely heavily on their roster veterans, perhaps over-insulating the team’s elite young talent in close games. They would deploy a more traditional forward line rotation, with two scoring lines, a checking line, and an energy fourth line. On the blueline, benches would be shortened again, electing to deploy more stable, defensive-oriented pairs.
Through 15 games, Quenneville, along with Woodcroft and McGill, has overhauled both philosophies. Quenneville has thus far disregarded line-matching tendencies, instead electing to roll three or even all four lines, regardless of situation or opponent. The blueline has been deployed in a more traditional “top-four and bottom-pair” rotation.
When evaluating how Quenneville values his young players, one needn’t look further than how he’s managed Beckett Sennecke, easily the Ducks’ most volatile rookie since Trevor Zegras in 2020-21. Sennecke drips talent, but remains a raw and far from finished product. Through the initial five to ten games of his rookie season, he made undisciplined decisions with the puck and struggled to win battles in small areas against the strongest defenders he’d faced to this point in his hockey career.
Sennecke’s comfort level expectedly grew as the games went on, and in the last two or three games, he’s not only keeping his head above water but is confident and dictating play on a shift-by-shift basis. One can’t imagine he’d have progressed so much so quickly had he spent extended periods on the bench after each mistake rather than play through them. He still has a long road ahead of him, but his extended leash seems to be a proper approach for his development, as he ranks fifth among Ducks forwards in TOI/G with 16:38.
Systems
Systems and play style have been the biggest differences when it comes to the on-ice product the Ducks are displaying on a nightly basis. Quenneville stated from his introductory press conference that he wants this Ducks team to play fast, heavy, and possess pucks, valuing pucks remaining on sticks.
As it seemed he did in Florida, he’s handed much of the systems work to Woodcroft and McGill when concocting offensive, defensive systems, power play, and penalty kill systems to cater to the roster, rather than asking the roster to cater to non-conducive systems. A lot of what they want to accomplish on both sides of the puck revolves around utilizing the players’ instincts in terms of reads and decision-making.
Offense/Power Play
The Ducks have become the NHL’s most high-flying offensive team in the NHL after spending the better part of the last decade in the basement in regards to most underlying and traditional offensive metrics.
It starts with the defensive zone (more on that below), where breakouts have been crisper and more calculated than in previous years. Their coverage system allows for more predictable locales for shorter outlet passes, ensuring more zone exits with possession, which then results in more possession-based builds through the neutral zone and rush opportunities, the true offensive strength of the roster.
On the cycle, rather than funneling pucks to the net from all angles in hopes of capitalizing on chaos and winning pucks back, players are encouraged to hold onto pucks and seek out more optimal and high-danger options.
Instead of passing pucks from low to high and darting to the net for screens, tips, rebounds, etc., forwards are encouraged to keep their feet moving, shift, weave, and switch throughout the offensive zone. Defensemen are encouraged to join and activate, not just pinching down the wall, but jumping to the middle when forwards are skating with pucks from low to high, and remaining involved in the cycle. The results have led to confusion of defending opponents and attackers’ ability to better utilize their strengths in the space it creates.
Similarly, the power play is built on the motion of both the puck and bodies throughout the structure, with forwards and defensemen alike, weaving in and out of the umbrella, seeking out the most optimal shooting opportunities and remaining unpredictable to penalty killers.
Defense/Penalty Kill
Cronin and Eakins both attempted to implement a man-to-man defensive zone coverage system, which several NHL teams had trended toward after the success of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Colorado Avalanche, and now the Florida Panthers. However, with the construction of the blueline as assembled by Verbeek, that system wasn’t designed to get the most out of forwards like Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier, Mason McTavish, or defensemen like Pavel Mintyukov, Olen Zellweger, or even Jacob Trouba.
Man-coverage is designed to limit cycle chances, but, like with the Ducks, when the roster isn’t built for it, it can lead to extended zone time, exhausting the reserves of defenders, and limiting the counterattack potential, again, the strength of the offense.
By switching to a pressure-zone coverage and when working to its potential, the Ducks can kill plays early, again utilizing the instincts of their young centers, and easily build rush chances, as noted above. Defensemen like Trouba and Zellweger, who use their sticks as their biggest defensive weapons, can read plays off and on-puck with greater ease and break up said plays to spark counters.
Man-coverage often led to players being in unpredictable positions for outlets when turnovers were manufactured, leading to pucks having to be chipped or flipped to neutral ice, where forwards would have to win an ensuing battle, not an area where the roster was designed to thrive.
With the ability to connect more outlets, coupled with the willingness of defensemen to activate off the far side, the Ducks have been able to concoct all-out and overwhelming rush attacks.
On the PK, McGill has also leaned into a pressure system, even leading to several offensive opportunities while down a player. Carlsson and Terry have highlighted the PK up front, and when pucks are on the wall without clear established possession, they’re encouraged to pressure in waves to influence poor reads from puck carriers, leading to turnovers.
Whether it’s on the ice, off the ice, their offensive values, or defensive perspective, the Ducks’ early results have been based on Quenneville’s approach to single-game situations as they relate to the bigger season-long picture, as well as deploying systems conducive to the talented and budding roster Verbeek has constructed in Anaheim.
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Raphielle Johnson
