{"id":262421,"date":"2026-04-11T08:26:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T08:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/262421\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T08:26:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T08:26:16","slug":"ducks-extend-gm-pat-verbeek-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/262421\/","title":{"rendered":"Ducks Extend GM Pat Verbeek \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Ducks have agreed to terms with general manager\u00a0Pat Verbeek<\/a>\u00a0on a multi-year contract extension, the team announced<\/a> Friday. The team has also promoted assistant GM\u00a0Mike Stapleton<\/a>\u00a0to associate GM, with the title of senior VP of hockey operations added.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a welcome reward for Verbeek, who\u2019s built a good chunk of the current Ducks roster that has the franchise on the verge of its first postseason appearance in eight years. He took over at the top of Anaheim\u2019s hockey ops department in February 2022 after spending several years under\u00a0Steve Yzerman<\/a>\u00a0as an assistant GM with both the Lightning and the Red Wings.<\/p>\n

Since then, he\u2019s been aggressive in his pursuit of finishing up the Ducks\u2019 rebuild. He\u2019s made six first-round selections during that time. With\u00a0Nathan Gaucher<\/a>\u00a0making his NHL debut recently, four of them have already logged game action. Two of them,\u00a0Leo Carlsson<\/a>\u00a0in 2023 and\u00a0Beckett Sennecke<\/a>\u00a0in 2024, are already among the team\u2019s top three scorers. The other name in that mix,\u00a0Cutter Gauthier<\/a>, was the fifth overall pick in 2022 by the Flyers, but Verbeek acquired his signing rights in exchange for Jamie Drysdale<\/a> two years later.<\/p>\n

Over the past couple of offseasons, he\u2019s been busy trying to insulate his still-developing young core with experienced talent. He\u2019s made free-agent splashes for Mikael Granlund<\/a>,\u00a0 Alex Killorn<\/a>\u00a0and captain\u00a0Radko Gudas<\/a>\u00a0while weaponizing his cap space to acquire beleaguered names like\u00a0Chris Kreider<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jacob Trouba<\/a>. His open-market record has been something of a mixed bag, but his trade history, particularly over the past two seasons, is difficult to argue with. He capped all of that work off by acquiring a likely Hall-of-Fame defenseman in John Carlson<\/a>, albeit as a potential rental, at this year\u2019s trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Of Anaheim\u2019s top 10 scorers, Verbeek has signed, drafted, or acquired seven of them. It\u2019s fully his team now, especially after making his mark behind the bench last summer with the hiring of\u00a0Joel Quenneville<\/a>. As such, Ducks ownership had no intention of letting him reach the end of his contract without a new deal. Owners Henry and Susan Samueli said Verbeek has \u201cturned the Ducks into what we believe are perennial contenders for the next decade.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for Stapleton, his promotion secures his Anaheim tenure should extend meaningfully into its second decade. The veteran of 697 NHL games never suited up in Orange County during his playing career, but has only been with the Ducks in his front-office work.<\/p>\n

After several years of coaching in the OHL and AHL, Anaheim picked Stapleton up as a pro scout back in 2014. He was promoted to the team\u2019s director of player personnel in 2022 before Verbeek bumped him up to an AGM role two years later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ducks have agreed to terms with general manager\u00a0Pat Verbeek\u00a0on a multi-year contract extension, the team announced Friday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":48354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,115245,46268,14932],"class_list":{"0":"post-262421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-ducks","10":"tag-anaheim-headlines","11":"tag-anaheim-news","12":"tag-mike-stapleton","13":"tag-newsstand","14":"tag-pat-verbeek"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}