Category: Sports News

Gerard Gallant has been named the head coach of the KHL’s Shanghani Dragons. 

The Dragons were previously known as the Kunlun Red Star, before officially rebranding this summer.

The 61-year-old coach takes over for Mikhail Kravets, who was let go after one season on the job.

Throughout his career, Gallant has served as head coach for several teams, including the Columbus Blue Jackets, Florida Panthers, Vegas Golden Knights, and most recently, the New York Rangers.

Gallant coached the Rangers for two seasons from 2021 to 2023. 

He led the Blueshirts to the Eastern Conference Final in 2022, but in his second season in New York, the team failed to live up to expectations and ultimately lost in the first round to the New Jersey Devils. 

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“I don’t know if he’s (Gallant) been in any of these particular interviews this year, I just don’t know,” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said. “I have heard he’s eager to prove that when he got let go by the Rangers, It wasn’t only about him, and he wants an opportunity to show people that. We’ll see if he gets an opportunity with teams to talk about that.”

If Gallant plans to one day return to the NHL, this opportunity in the KHL will be a chance for him to put his name back on the coaching radar.

The Hockey News’ NHL summer splash rankings are nearly wrapped up, with the Anaheim Ducks in fifth place.

In these summer splash rankings, we’re examining each team’s off-season additions, departures, hirings and firings to see who improved or worsened. We’ve already catalogued all teams that got worse or basically stayed the same, and we’ve nearly arrived at the very top of the group of teams that improved or, in special circumstances, exceeded expectations to prevent getting worse.

We’re focused solely on NHL teams’ off-season development, or lack thereof. The Ducks are still rebuilding, and it will be challenging for them to make the playoffs, but they took notable steps forward this summer.

Additions

Mikael Granlund (C), Chris Kreider (LW), Ryan Poehling (C), Petr Mrazek (G), Joel Quenneville (coach)

The Breakdown: The Ducks finished 16 points out of a playoff spot in the West, and Anaheim GM Pat Verbeek went into the off-season with a mandate to get this team as competitive as possible as quickly as possible. 

You can’t argue he hasn’t done so, as bringing in a slew of veterans – including former Dallas Stars center Mikael Granlund, former New York Rangers left winger Chris Kreider and reinstated coach Joel Quenneville – will almost assuredly result in a better record for the Ducks next season.

Kreider and Granlund will be looked to for a boost on offense after the Ducks scored the third-fewest goals in the NHL last season. 

Kreider, 34, only had 22 goals and 30 points in 68 games, but he put up 39 goals and 75 points in 2023-24, so even landing somewhere in between would boost the Ducks. Granlund, 33, was one of the rebuilding San Jose Sharks’ leading scorers in the last two seasons before being traded to the Stars, where he still had 21 points in 31 games in more of a depth role.

Even Ryan Poehling, who came to the Ducks in the Trevor Zegras trade, can provide some solid depth scoring. He put up 12 goals and 31 points in 68 games with the Philadelphia Flyers while averaging just 13:53 of ice time.

Petr Mrazek came back in the John Gibson trade. He’ll compete with Ville Husso for the backup role. Either option is unlikely to perform as well as Gibson, so the goalie tandem is worse on paper but not enough to drag down the team’s overall improvement.

Quenneville must provide structure and confidence for a young Ducks core. And the truly crazy thing is that, after all those changes, Verbeek still has a whopping $20.5 million in available salary cap space. 

Some of that will go to RFA center Mason McTavish, or to a player McTavish is traded for, but the Ducks will be able to be big-timers in trades this year. If that’s what it takes to bring in more top-level performers who can be part of Anaheim’s long-term future, Verbeek and the rest of Anaheim management will be thrilled to do so.

Departures

John Gibson (G), Trevor Zegras (C), Robby Fabbri (C), Isac Lundestrom (C), Brock McGinn (LW), Brett Leason (RW), Oliver Kylington (D), Greg Cronin (coach) 

The Breakdown: Gibson and Zegras are by far the Ducks’ biggest departures this off-season.

It felt like Gibson was in the trade rumor mill for at least two years, but now was the right time. Lukas Dostal, 25, played 54 games in net and showed he can permanently take over on starting duties. Gibson’s .912 save percentage and 2.77 goals-against average were better than Dostal’s .903 SP and 3.10 GAA, but Dostal is still young for an NHL goalie and should only improve from here.

Trading Zegras would have been bewildering two years ago after his second 60-point season, but he’s since dealt with injury issues and a drop in production from 0.80 points per game in 2022-23 to 0.56 in 2024-25. With Leo Carlsson and McTavish becoming a one-two punch down the middle, and with Mikael Granlund under contract for the next three years, it made sense to move Zegras to the Philadelphia Flyers for a fresh start and craft a more consistently healthy and effective roster.

As for Robby Fabbri, Brock McGinn, Brett Leason and Oliver Kylington, they haven’t latched on with another NHL team as of mid-August. Some of them may get contracts later in the off-season, but the Ducks were a subpar team last year because they simply didn’t have enough above-average talent, and Verbeek has done what he could to flush out some of that subpar talent in favor of more proven veterans.

Also gone after two years behind Anaheim’s bench is coach Greg Cronin, who was in his first job as an NHL coach when Verbeek replaced him with Quenneville. It’s true the Ducks improved in Cronin’s time running the team, going from 59 points in Year 1 to 80 in Year 2, but the chance to bring in a multi-time Cup-winner in Quenneville sealed Cronin’s fate.

Anaheim will still have some growing pains in the next few years, but Verbeek has clearly improved his team’s depth. And that’s the name of the game when it comes to getting out of the mix of non-playoff teams and moving into the mix of playoff teams.

The Bottom Line

The Ducks missed the playoffs for the last seven seasons. Rebuilding was always going to take time, but Anaheim fans will tell you this current rebuild has already taken up more time than they hoped it would.

While it will still be a challenge for the Ducks to leapfrog over Pacific Division teams, such as the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks, to qualify for the 2026 post-season, Anaheim now has a clearly defined core of youngsters to build around, and they’ve supplemented them with experienced hands in Kreider and Granlund.

At the end of next season, the Ducks may be a non-playoff team yet again. But the reason they’re so high in our summer splash rankings is because they’re a better team than the one that ended last season. They have more scoring power, they upgraded bench bosses, and their untouched defense core continues to develop along with their young starting netminder. 

At the very least, Anaheim should be playing meaningful hockey right down the stretch. Verbeek has done what he set out to do, and that’s why, in our opinion, only four teams rank higher in the NHL summer splash rankings than the Ducks.

Summer Splash Rankings

5. Anaheim Ducks

6. Philadelphia Flyers

7. Vancouver Canucks

8. San Jose Sharks

9. Utah Mammoth

10. New York Rangers

11. Detroit Red Wings

12. New Jersey Devils

13. St. Louis Blues

14. Pittsburgh Penguins

15. Colorado Avalanche

16. Ottawa Senators

17. Boston Bruins

18. Edmonton Oilers

19. Minnesota Wild

20. Seattle Kraken

21. Columbus Blue Jackets

22. Washington Capitals

23. Nashville Predators

24. New York Islanders

25. Tampa Bay Lightning

26. Toronto Maple Leafs

27. Dallas Stars

28. Calgary Flames

29. Los Angeles Kings

30. Winnipeg Jets

31. Chicago Blackhawks

32. Buffalo Sabres

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The Ides of August have arrived, and the Anaheim Ducks, along with general manager Pat Verbeek, still have one outstanding order of business in which to attend: the signing of RFA center Mason McTavish.

McTavish (3rd overall in 2021) is the third player considered (at the time of the negotiation) to be part of the long-term outlook of the organization that Verbeek has negotiated with after the expiration of their ELCs. The first two were notoriously Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale in the summer of 2023.

Both Zegras and Drysdale’s negotiations bled into training camp, the Ducks’ first with then-new head coach Greg Cronin. After finally signing, they both sustained injuries in camp while attempting to get up to speed, which impacted their output early in the 2023-24 season and likely had a lasting effect. Both players are no longer part of the organization.

McTavish’s situation is eerily similar, and as the saying goes, “twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern.”

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Verbeek and assistant general manager Jeff Solomon now have reputations league-wide as tough negotiators who are willing to play “hardball” with RFAs, especially in situations where they hold all leverage, like with players coming off ELCs. Verbeek has also verbalized his desire to bridge young players, counter to recent trends of teams extending core pieces who are 21-24 years old to seven or eight-year contracts.

“Part of my philosophy is I like to do bridge deals with players,” Verbeek said at the annual post-trade deadline ‘Ducks Migration’ event for season ticket holders. “It allows the players two things. It allows them to have no pressure to grow and get better before they have the long-term contract. It also allows the team to assess them over the three years of how good they are really going to be. From a team approach, I prefer to do bridge deals, two to three years, and then if it warrants, a seven to eight-year deal after that.”

That sentiment has echoed through the summer, beginning with premier NHL insider Elliotte Friedman in early July.

“Verbeek, he’s careful. I don’t think he wants to hand anybody money too quickly. If you want the money, you’re going to have to earn it,” Friedman said on his “32 Thoughts” podcast on July 6. “I think if there’s long-term extensions, they’re at numbers that are very favorable to the Ducks, to the point where I’d be surprised. I would be shocked if they got long-term deals done at big numbers.”

Since then, and as the summer has gotten longer with endless trade and/or offer sheet speculation, reports have surfaced of McTavish and his camp’s preference for a long-term contract with Anaheim.

“He’s not being shopped by any means,” Jimmy Murphy of RG Media said on ‘The Sick Podcast with Tony Marinaro’ on Aug. 8. “Pat Verbeek wants a bridge deal, (a) two to three-year deal. McTavish wants a longer deal; he wants more AAV than they’re offering.”

“With McTavish, I’ve always felt he’s going to stay in Anaheim, and I still do,” Cam Robinson of Elite Prospects stated while on the ‘Sekeres & Price Show.’ “I think the issue with them is that (McTavish) would like a nice, big, fat, long-term deal that pays him out, and I think Anaheim would like to bridge him.”

The benefit and the prominent reason teams have favored signing their young core pieces to long-term contracts early lies in the potential that they will outplay their AAV and their contract will become a positive value for the team.

In a landscape like the one the NHL finds itself in, now with a seemingly ever-rising salary cap ceiling, players are likely to outperform their salary far quicker, like Lucas Raymond, Jack Hughes, Matt Boldy, etc.

It will likely never be reported, but if McTavish were willing to sign a seven or eight-year contract at an AAV under $8 million, he would likely eclipse that value in short order.

McTavish (22) has improved his on-ice play and production in every one of his three seasons in the NHL. He followed up a 43-point (17-26=43) performance in 82 games (.54 points per game) in his 2022-23 rookie year with 42 points (19-23=42) in 64 games (.66 points per game) in 2023-24 and 52 points (22-30=52) in 76 games (.68 points per game) last season, stats made more impressive considering where the Ducks finished in the standings and how poor their offensive totals have been to this point in his career.

McTavish has elevated his two-way and detailed play in all three zones year after year as well. He has become the high-motor, small-area creator he was projected as when he was drafted. Defensively, where he was once a considerable liability in coverage, his mistakes diminished in 2024-25, and his diligence was more pronounced.

He’s also shown improvements in terms of play-dictation and vision with the puck on his stick, driving play on a more consistent basis. He will likely never have the foot speed to become a transition ace, but he has more than enough capability to connect, build, and extend plays from goal line to goal line.

With a new incoming head coach who carries the second-best resume in NHL history in the form of Joel Quenneville (along with an elite staff), and a roster more populous with insulating forwards, McTavish is primed for a true breakout season in 2025-26. It’s shaping up to be a season where, behind Leo Carlsson, he won’t face opposing shutdown lines, and ahead of centers like Mikael Granlund, Ryan Strome, and/or Ryan Poehling, he won’t face opposing top scoring lines either.

If Verbeek truly intends to repeat his negotiating tactics from two summers ago, where talks extend into training camp, one hopes lessons were learned and McTavish is gradually reintroduced to the rigors of camp under a new coaching regime to avoid related injury.

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