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Ducks section:

>2025 ranking: 22

>“Verbeek’s stubbornness and refusal to lock up his young players early might have stalled the Ducks rebuild out, right when it looked like it had the opportunity to take flight. His old school, hard-nosed tactics have no place in the modern NHL.”

>“Verbeek was on a roll until the Leo Carlsson drama unfolded. If he can navigate Gauthier’s new contract and roster construction without going backwards in the standings, he will restore his reputation as the GM we hoped he would be.”

>After making the playoffs and winning a round, it was easy to imagine Ducks management climbing the ranks this summer. Anaheim has all the makings of a future beast in the West thanks to a sterling young core, and those types of teams usually boast high marks in this survey. The team’s top-10 mark in drafting and developing speaks to that.

>But then the Leo Carlsson offer sheet debacle happened and it’s hard to view Anaheim’s front office and its future the same way. Carlsson is a fantastic player that may one day become a top-10 center, but he’s now on an extremely inefficient contract that may limit the team’s ceiling. It’s hard to build a competitive roster when the top guy gets paid $3-5 million more than he should. That Pat Verbeek let the situation get to that point was an egregious error that may deeply set the team back. It’s one that’s created a significant change in confidence over the last year despite the team’s success.

>Selecting Carlsson (and Beckett Sennecke) against conventional wisdom is a point in the team’s favor and the Cutter Gauthier trade was a master stroke. If his next contract can stay reasonable, that might curry some favor back to Verbeek. But the sting of paying Carlsson a lot more than they had to may linger for a long time.