Whatever the case, this much is certain: The Ducks are one of the feel-good stories of the 2025-26 season.<\/p>\n
To that end, consider this: The Ducks (36-25-3), who have not qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2018, enter play Thursday in first place in the Pacific Division, three points ahead of the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers. \u00a0In a division that features stars like Connor McDavid<\/a>, Leon Draisaitl<\/a>, Jack Eichel<\/a>, Mitch Marner<\/a> and Macklin Celebrini<\/a>,\u00a0that\u2019s an impressive feat.<\/p>\n One that Verbeek, who was named GM on Feb. 3, 2022, hopes the Ducks can springboard into postseason success.<\/p>\n First off, how excited did you get when the Capitals first mentioned Carlson, who\u2019s in the final season of an eight-year, $64 million contract?<\/p>\n \u201cHe’s a heck of a player. I played against him when I was playing for Tampa. \u00a0And he’s having a heck of a year this year (46 points; 10 goals, 36 assists). I think he’s one of the top defensemen in 5-on-5 production with points. And so for me, bringing someone like this in was really important for our group. And so we’ll be able to slide our defensemen into different positions. And I think it\u2019s also going to give Joel (Ducks coach Quenneville) a different matchup down this stretch here for the playoffs \u2026 hopefully into the playoffs. So just going to allow us to do different things and give us a lot of depth on defense now. The schedule has been so crazy as far as how many games we\u2019re playing. They\u2019re coming fast here. And so when your guys get tired, there\u2019s a little bit of a tendency for injuries to happen. I hope we can avoid it. But if we can\u2019t, we still have depth to kind of keep pushing through.\u201d<\/p>\n The Carlson acquisition symbolized a change in philosophy for the Ducks, who in recent years have been sellers at the NHL Trade Deadline. How much does it mean to your players to see firsthand efforts of management to help them land their first postseason appearance in eight years?<\/p>\n \u201cI think it’s important for our group to make the playoffs. For the past three years, I\u2019ve always been selling. \u00a0But this year, we have a lot of belief in the group. The team, the players, they believe in the group that we have. And so, we had an opportunity to add a really good player to the group. And I think that created more excitement among the players because they understand that management believes in them too. So, it\u2019s just a snowball effect in the sense of where the confidence grows. And obviously the expectation is to make the playoffs and keep pushing forward.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you have any interest in re-signing Carlson after this season?<\/p>\n \u201cI think the answer is yes. But I think that, like all my other guys, you know, I’ve got other\u00a0UFAs, I’ve got RFAs. I think the whole mindset is just, \u2018let’s just play hockey, let\u2019s get in the playoffs,’ and then we’ll let all that stuff take care of itself at the appropriate time. And so all of us are focused on playing the games. All that other stuff, like I said, will take care of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whatever the case, this much is certain: The Ducks are one of the feel-good stories of the 2025-26…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530593,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-530592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530592\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}