IRVINE — When NHL players hit the Las Vegas Strip after a game, few get carded and even fewer get turned away for being underage.

But when the Ducks visit the Golden Knights for Friday night’s season opener, there will be plenty of exceptions for a team with three players under 21 and four more who are 22 at most. Renting a car could be even tougher as this year’s flock has a whopping 15 players who are 25 or younger.

In fact, this group is the youngest in the league, a distinction the Ducks didn’t even have three seasons ago when they lugged a hybrid AHL/NHL roster into a woeful 2023-24 campaign. As recently as this spring, that season seemed like a distant memory, as the Ducks not only made the playoffs but advanced to lose to the eventual Western Conference champions, these same Golden Knights.

Now, with nearly every cent of their cap space invested into a roster with haves and have-nots in terms of both salary and seasoning, the Ducks will look to recalculate the trajectory of a build that overflowed with promise after a summer that was inundated with problems. They’ve got more than $40 million per year sunk into their three-player nucleus, and they will need to get significant contributions from their teammates with entry-level cap hits if they want to build on last year’s progress.

A new captain and a contract year for an aging coach

Mikael Granlund’s jersey will be emblazoned with the captain’s “C” after Radko Gudas returned to the Florida Panthers this summer. Granlund, 34, joined the Ducks last season but became a locker room favorite in short order.

By his own description and that of anyone who had spent 10 seconds around him, he is a quiet player who leads by example and plays a skill-based game, in contrast to the rugged Gudas. That continuum of the captaincy unfolded under Coach Joel Quenneville, whose second year behind the bench is a contract year for the 68-year-old who has four Stanley Cup championship rings. In Year 1, the Ducks’ best season since 2017, he certainly stated a strong case to stay longer.

Granlund’s prior experience as a captain was in international play, thrice captaining Finland, including at February’s Olympics. Fellow Leijonat competitor Joel Armia, a winger for the Kings, lauded Granlund’s leadership and said he was surprised he had not become an NHL captain sooner. Granlund will be the third-oldest player on the team behind Alex Killorn, 37, and Nick Jensen, 36. With three sons of his own, he’s quite comfortable in the dad role.

“We have a great group. Great kids. Great human beings. I love to be around them,” Granlund told Ducks Stream. “We’ll try to keep it that way, having that good feeling here. We’re all trying t o be boys, and friends here, so that makes it more fun.”

Free of free-agent drama

No one felt the offseason’s sharp ascent of player salaries quite like the Ducks, whose inability to get all four of their significant pending restricted free agents under contract drastically reshaped their outlook. After signing Jackson LaCombe to a deal that raised a few eyebrows last fall but has aged very well since, General Manager Pat Verbeek let Leo Carlsson, Cutter Gauthier and Pavel Mintyukov go past July 1 without new contracts, and the results were disastrous. All three players came in millions above cap projections and forced a reckoning that created immense roster turnover.

In the wake of that cataclysm, Verbeek publicly promised to take a more proactive inclination toward RFAs. Not only do the Ducks at least know what they’re dealing with – $47.7 million annually committed to four players beginning new contracts this year – but their management has made good on its word.

They signed Tim Washe to a four-year extension and made another huge commitment on defense. Whereas LaCombe had turned in one stellar season before signing his $9 million per annum pact, Tristan Luneau had just 14 games in a limited role before inking an extension worth $7.2 million per season. It doesn’t get a lot more proactive than that for Verbeek, who should be able to get past the summer’s sticker shock as the rest of the league sees salaries increase along with the cap ceiling in coming years.

“We’re in a good spot. I’m very excited for this team. So, I can’t wait to see how it all comes together,” Verbeek said.

This defense? This penalty kill?

The Ducks managed to outscore many of their issues on defense and in net last year, but they still ended up with a negative goal differential – only the Ducks and Kings were in the red among 16 playoff teams – and poor defensive metrics.

They finished 27th out of 32 teams on the penalty kill. Though they placed in the middle of the pack in terms of allowing high-danger chances, they were in the bottom five of prime opportunities ceded while shorthanded. They also gave up the second-most medium-danger chances in the NHL across all situations, per MoneyPuck.

Now, with only a depth veteran in Jensen and a cluster of minor-league callups arriving on the back end, Quenneville will be tasked with taking advantage of the boost in athleticism and minimizing the precipitous drop in know-how for a squad that already struggled on the PK and defensively overall. When asked about the churn in his roster, Quenneville thought back to his time in Chicago, where he stewarded the Blackhawks to Stanley Cup titles in 2010, 2013 and 2015.

“In Chicago, we lost a lot of guys that were all important pieces. That’s the game,” Quenneville told Ducks Stream. “We only had eight guys that were on all three (championship teams) in a short amount of time.”