{"id":309528,"date":"2025-11-26T08:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T08:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/309528\/"},"modified":"2025-11-26T08:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T08:21:07","slug":"trophy-tracker-quenneville-of-ducks-in-lead-for-jack-adams-as-top-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/309528\/","title":{"rendered":"Trophy Tracker: Quenneville of Ducks in lead for Jack Adams as top coach"},"content":{"rendered":"

To mark the first quarter of the 2025-26 regular season, NHL.com is running its second installment of the Trophy Tracker series this week. Today, we look at the race for the Jack Adams Award<\/a>, given annually to the top coach in the NHL as selected in a vote by the NHL Broadcasters’ Association.<\/p>\n

Joel Quenneville has mastered the art of winning. He’s teaching the Anaheim Ducks how to do it.<\/p>\n

For seven seasons, the Ducks have finished no higher than sixth in their division. Even at the first quarter of 2025-26 and five months until the Stanley Cup Playoffs, there are feelings tangible and intangible about a franchise absent from the postseason since getting swept out of the 2018 Western Conference First Round by the San Jose Sharks.<\/p>\n

The Ducks are 14-7-1 with 29 points, the most they’ve had after 22 games since the 2014-15 season (13-4-5, 31 points). They won seven in a row from Oct. 28 to Nov. 9, their best run since an eight-game streak from Oct. 31 to Nov. 16, 2021. They finished that season 31-37-14, but that was then.<\/p>\n

“Coach always says that finding ways to win is a skill, and I think we’re finding that,” forward Ryan Strome<\/a> said after a 4-3 victory against the Boston Bruins on Nov. 19.<\/p>\n

A panel of 16 NHL.com writers made Quenneville the favorite to win the Jack Adams Award with 61 voting points, including nine for first place. It’s a credit to the maturation of a young core, the guidance of battle-tested veterans and the cachet Quenneville has brought to Anaheim as a three-time Stanley Cup champion with the Chicago Blackhawks (2010, 2013, 2015) and 983 regular-season wins that ranks second to Scotty Bowman (1,244) in NHL history.<\/p>\n

Dan Muse (Pittsburgh Penguins) was second in the voting with 40 points, and Marco Sturm (Bruins) was third (36).<\/p>\n

“We’re playing game to game,” Quenneville said after a 4-3 victory at the Vegas Golden Knights on Nov. 8 that extended the winning streak to six. “We’re only playing the game we’re in. It’s a long season, but we’re a young team. We expect to get better as we go along here. Every night, everybody is contributing.”<\/p>\n

Quenneville has received assistance accelerating the Ducks rebuild from veterans Chris Kreider<\/a> (34), Mikael Granlund<\/a> (33), Strome (32) and Jacob Trouba<\/a> (31), who are showing willing apprentices Mason McTavish<\/a> (22), Cutter Gauthier<\/a> (21), Leo Carlsson<\/a> (20) and Beckett Sennecke<\/a> (19) how it’s done. Carlsson, the No. 2 pick in the 2023 NHL Draft, has a team-high 29 points (11 goals, 18 assists) and had points in 11 consecutive games from Oct. 21 to Nov. 11, the longest by a Ducks skater since Troy Terry<\/a> — a 28-year-old forward still in his prime — enjoyed a 16-game run from Oct. 18 to Nov. 18, 2021.<\/p>\n

Anaheim is averaging 3.59 goals per game, 14-2-0 when scoring at least three goals and 12-0-0 with at least four. The Ducks had 73 goals through their first 20 games, a team record, and, said Carlsson, are having fun because “‘Q’ is a great coach.”<\/p>\n

“The guys were very eager to do well and wanting to win,” Anaheim’s Pat Verbeek<\/a> said before the GM meetings in Toronto from Nov. 14-16, “and I think we’ve preached puck possession, and the guys have bought into that. We’ve scored goals, and now they’ve bought into it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest thing for a team is to buy in and to believe, and I think our team has kind of done that.”<\/p>\n

Voting totals (points awarded on a 5-4-3-2-1- basis): Joel Quenneville, Anaheim Ducks, 61 points (nine first-place votes); Dan Muse, Pittsburgh Penguins, 40 (2); Marco Sturm, Boston Bruins, 36 (3); Jared Bednar, Colorado Avalanche, 34 points (2); Jeff Blashill, Chicago Blackhawks, 23; Sheldon Keefe, New Jersey Devils, 12; Martin St. Louis, Montreal Canadiens, 11; Todd McLellan, Detroit Red Wings, 5; Rod Brind’Amour, Carolina Hurricanes, 4; Andre Tourigny, Utah Mammoth, 4; Lane Lambert, Seattle Kraken, 3; Ryan Warsofsky, San Jose Sharks, 3; Scott Arniel, Winnipeg Jets, 2; Patrick Roy, New York Islanders, 1; Glen Gulutzan, Dallas Stars, 1<\/p>\n

NHL.com columnist Nicholas J. Cotsonika contributed to this report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To mark the first quarter of the 2025-26 regular season, NHL.com is running its second installment of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":309529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-309528","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}