The Anaheim Ducks Are A Defensive Disaster
We haven't seen NHL defense this bad in many decades — if not longer.
There was a time, not so long ago, when the Anaheim Ducks were perennial contenders. They came within two wins of the Stanley Cup Final just six years ago. In fact, between 2002-03 and 2017-18, Anaheim made the playoffs 12 times in 15 years, winning one Cup, making another Final and appearing in the conference finals five times. That stretch overlapped with the bulk of the Ryan Getzlaf-Corey Perry Ducks era — which also connected the franchise all the way back to its crowning glory, the championship run it made in 2007.
Needless to say, those days are over. Getzlaf and Perry are gone, and the next generation that was supposed to fill in behind them has largely flopped. The best things the Ducks have going for them now are gimmicky Trevor Zegras stick-tricks and a 13.5% chance to draft Connor Bedard No. 1 overall in the NHL Draft. But the team is making a bit of history in its bid to be as bad as possible: Without exaggeration, you could make the case that this 2022-23 Anaheim team owns literally the worst defense in the history of hockey.
Just at the most elemental level, the Ducks are allowing an astonishing 39.6 shots per game this season. That’s 4.1 more shots allowed per game than the next-closest team, the Arizona Coyotes; the difference between the Ducks and Coyotes is the same as the difference between the No. 2 Coyotes and the No. 15 Philadelphia Flyers. Anaheim’s defense is orders of magnitude worse than anyone else’s this season — and history doesn’t have much competition to offer, either.
Going back to 1959-60, the earliest season for which Hockey-Reference has shot data, no team before this year had even allowed 38.5 shots per game in a season — the previous “record” was 38.3, held by the dreadful 1974-75 Washington Capitals. The current Ducks are tracking to demolish that record by more than 1 full shot per game.
Pity poor goaltender John Gibson, who (after rounding) is on pace to become the first goalie to face 40 or more shots per 60 minutes in recorded history. The fact that Gibson’s goals against average is “only” 4.01 — somehow not the worst in the league — is vaguely impressive, considering the onslaught he’s up against on a nightly basis.
Is it possible that other defenses have been worse than Anaheim’s, particularly in the pre-shot data era? Sure. Going back to the dawn of NHL history in 1917-18, 34 other teams have allowed more goals per game relative to league average than Anaheim this season. And according to adjusted Goals Above Replacement, which tries to parse blame for a team’s relative goals allowed between its defenders and goalies, five historical teams (the 1919-20 Quebec Bulldogs, 1974-75 Capitals, 1992-93 San Jose Sharks, 1989-90 Quebec Nordiques and 1943-44 New York Rangers) were worse defensively than the 2022-23 Ducks.
But that’s all splitting hairs, at a certain point. The fact that it’s even a debate means that Anaheim’s defenders — looking at you, John Klingberg, Simon Benoit, Nathan Beaulieu, Urho Vaakanainen, Kevin Shattenkirk and Cam Fowler, among many others — have let opponents fire at the net with basically zero resistance so far this year. That might be a good recipe for tanking to get Bedard, or letting Gibson hunt records for 50-save losses in a season, but it’s also a sign of just how far the Ducks have fallen since their golden era ended.