The Daily Faceoff Show: How the Manson deal affects the Ducks – and the trade market

The Anaheim Ducks are in sell mode following yesterday’s trade for Josh Manson. The team appear to be far apart in contract negotiations with pending unrestricted free agents Hampus Lindholm and Rickard Rakell, so Manson is likely not the only big name they are moving to this year’s trade deadline. .

But what do Ducks players think of the state of the team before the deadline? What impact does this have on the defender trade market? Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna discuss it on today’s Daily Faceoff Show.

Mike McKenna: Ducks players have taken a few body shots here recently. The team hasn’t been very good, they haven’t gotten any saves in net, they’ve been very loose defensively and they’re just not where they should be. So I don’t think it’s a big surprise in this locker room. I’m sure there’s some disappointment to see Josh Manson go, who was certainly a big part of that leadership group on that team, but it’s a sign of things happening. Pat Verbeek will remake this team in his mould, I have no doubt.

I see no way forward for Rakell. He was a good performer, but he also missed time through injury. He will be 29 years old. I think the writing has been on the wall that he’s going to be out the door, in my eyes at least.

Lindholm is interesting, though, because if you talk to any Ducks player, they’ll want to keep that player in your locker room. He’s a guy who can perform, he’s one of the best defensemen in the league. But he is 28 years old. He would definitely get a first round. What impact can this have on the team in the near future? This is the part that is going to be hard to take here. The feeling in this piece is that « we are about to start, we should be there next year ». It might be tough right now, with some of the assets they’re going to store.

So if anything, that might delay things a bit. I’m interested to see how it goes, because Verbeek is doing its best to reload here on the fly, but which pieces will remain? Not a lot.

Frank Seravalli: It’s going to be tough to reload on the fly even if you want to, knocking out two of the top four defensemen in your roster in Manson and potentially Lindholm. These types do not grow on trees. You may be able to group together some of the assets you get and go after one of these players. There has been talk over the past two weeks that the Ducks would be one of those teams that could potentially be interested in Jakob Chychrun, who, by the way, is out injured for the next few weeks. What impact does this have on its commercial status?

There’s a lot to unpack here for the Ducks, and none of that is really good news in the short term because there’s a lot of work to replace these types of impact players in their roster.

So the other part of the equation here, in terms of this transaction that happened on Monday with Josh Manson: everybody wants to know, what impact is this having on the defensive market in terms of leasing ? And I can tell you that looking at it, I don’t know if it has any impact.

Were teams going to sit there and say ‘That’s great value for Josh Manson, we can potentially get a little more? or have some teams been disappointed saying « We may not be able to get as much as we hoped »?

I think that’s a neutral answer. The truth is, Josh Manson probably always tended to get picked in the second round. If you look at his game over the last few years, he’s really gone down since his concussions, since his shoulder injuries. He just wasn’t the same player. He certainly hasn’t played at the same level as a few years ago. We were talking about teams salivate previously, first-round pick for Josh Manson all day.

Thing is, now they’re basically left with two seconds because Helleson was a second-round pick. As Chris Peters mentioned in our reports and analysis on DailyFaceoff.com, he tends to become a full-time NHL player when it comes to maybe an extra season from now for Drew Helleson.

But when you look at the rest of the defensive market, aside from Lindholm, who are you really excited about potentially adding these players to your squad?

Mike McKenna: Well, I think it’s a foregone conclusion that Ben Chiarot is going to draw a first-round pick. I think at this point Mark Giordano is probably in that range as well. I think teams will eventually get to the trade deadline and they’ll get desperate, because someone’s going to lose Chiarot, and potentially multiple teams, and who do you replace that with?

Lindholm, to me, is the star of the show right now. I mean, you get offensive production and you have someone who can play a lot of minutes, but it’s about fit most of the time. Josh Manson was the right fit for the Colorado Avalanche. He can play a role of five or six with them, and not log as many minutes as he had to in Anaheim, he played more shutdown. I think it suits him very well, and that’s why for the Avalanche, it made sense to make this play, but he wasn’t a first-round pick for a trade. I never got him in that upper tier where, say, John Klingberg was. Well, he’s off the board now.

You’re starting to see a really condensed seller’s market when it comes to quality Defenders. And that’s where I think Chiarot, first, Giordano is probably going to get to this stage as well, but I don’t think we’re going to see as many first-round picks move around as maybe expected before the date limit even three, four, five weeks ago.

Frank Seravalli: The interesting average over the past five years is that five first-round picks have moved in the typical time frame.

I don’t know if Seattle Kraken’s Mark Giordano will get a premiere. The Kraken are looking for one. I think he’s probably closing in on the second-round pick. Lindholm all day. I wonder if the Montreal Canadiens with Ben Chiarot may not have overcooked this a bit, in that they are hoping for the return of David Savard, a first and a third. I don’t think they will necessarily get that. That’s what they asked for, and if someone was willing to deliver it, they would have already gotten up and paid for it.

I don’t know, I think you’re right. And the other part you mentioned, snug. How about Manson? There aren’t many right-handed defenders available, and many of those defenders on the list we just looked at? The lefties. So you see Colin Miller of the Buffalo Sabers as another one of those right-handers further down the list. There aren’t a ton of right-handed defenders available, so that’s definitely something to watch as well, as teams look for that good fit.

You can watch the full episode here…