For the Ducks, it was a summer of mostly unwelcome developments, but as the season nears they\u2019ll display some of their oh-so-formidable young talent next week.<\/p>\n
First, they\u2019ll take to the sheets Friday at Great Park Ice in Irvine for a practice open to the public. Then, they\u2019ll head north to San Jose for a Rookie Faceoff tournament hosted by the Sharks.<\/p>\n
Their games will be streamed on the team\u2019s website as they clash with up-and-comers from the Colorado Avalanche on Saturday afternoon before facing the Kings\u2019 contingent Sunday.<\/p>\n
First-rounders Nikita Klepov<\/a> and Marcus Nordmark<\/a>, the wingers selected with the picks acquired from St. Louis in exchange for Mason McTavish<\/a>, will be on hand. So too will 2025 lottery-pick center Roger McQueen<\/a> and 2026 Olympian goalie Damian Clara<\/a>.<\/p>\n Klepov, who decommitted from Michigan State in July, and McQueen, who had a solid freshman year at Providence, are two players that are pushing hard to make the Ducks\u2019 opening-night roster. They also have serious aspirations of becoming core attackers in the future.<\/p>\n Another forward, 2025 trade-deadline pickup Herman Tr\u00e4ff<\/a>, will also be a participant following a bustout campaign in Sweden\u2019s relegation league last season.<\/p>\n The group on defense is inexperienced, even for this setting. Graduated prospects like Tyson Hinds, Tristan Luneau, Stian Solberg and Noah Warren are all seeking to move upward in the organization following the departures of captain Radko Gudas<\/a>, top-pair righty Jacob Trouba<\/a>, 2026 deadline splash John Carlson<\/a> and smooth-skating Olen Zellweger<\/a>.<\/p>\n It was an offseason with no shortage of change-of-address forms for the 2025-26 Ducks. In addition to those four defensemen and McTavish, they also saw grinding forwards Ross Johnston, Jansen Harkins and Jeffrey Viel find new homes. Meanwhile, gifted winger Troy Terry will miss at least the first two months of the season<\/a> while he recovers from hip surgery.<\/p>\n A.J. Greer<\/a> and Jeff Malott were added up front along with Nick Jensen on the back end and Laurent Brossoit in goal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, GM Pat Verbeek saw the cost of center Leo Carlsson<\/a> (five years, $18 million annual average value) and defenseman Pavel Mintyukov<\/a> (five years, $7.2 million AAV) balloon well beyond projections, while last year\u2019s leading scorer Cutter Gauthier remains unsigned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the Ducks, it was a summer of mostly unwelcome developments, but as the season nears they\u2019ll display…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,404,127],"class_list":["post-456385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456385","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=456385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}