His name is still listed on the roster section of the team’s website. His stall remains in the corner of the locker rooms at the practice facility and the home arena. He’ll be on the ice with his teammates as they begin training camp, trying to emerge from the ashes of a horrific season.
John Gibson and the Ducks are still together, even if their union has frayed and been tested by struggles in recent years. When he signed his eight-year extension on his 2018 wedding day, Gibson was coming out of his best statistical season and a future of more All-Star years – and perhaps a challenge for a Vezina Trophy — seemed possible.
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Now, in a second straight summer, there were questions about whether Gibson wanted to stay with the team that made him their franchise goalie. There were reports of him asking for a trade or saying, “I am not playing another game for the Anaheim Ducks” being refuted and squelched.
Does Gibson want to be traded? He probably wouldn’t mind one. Do the Ducks want to trade him? They probably would be fine with one. But there’s that contract – which once looked like something tying them together for a legacy-building run – which right now looks impossible to move with too much left in years and money on it for a netminder whose numbers, if not his stature in the eyes of a growing many, have cratered.
The Ducks start as an official working group on the sheet Thursday at Great Park Ice. Gibson is expected to be among them. (Although all eyes will be on Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale, who remain unsigned.) Anaheim’s longtime net-holder really has no other option even if there was any sliver of seriousness to the won’t-play-for-Ducks mantra. The two must plot to turn around a career that has been derailed by an unending onslaught of grade-A scoring chances.
Gibson has the most losses incurred by any goalie over the last four years. The franchise’s second-winningest goalie now, incredibly, has a pedestrian 180-179-59 record. Can he and the Ducks stop the bludgeoning? Or is a separation inevitable?
2022-23 in review
PLAYER | GP/STARTS | W-L-OTL | GAA | SHO | SV% | QS% | GSAA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
John Gibson | 53/52 | 14-31-8 | 3.99 | 1 | 0.899 | 0.481 | -10.1 |
Lukas Dostal | 19/17 | 4-10-3 | 3.78 | 0.901 | 0.706 | -2.0 | |
Anthony Stolarz | 19/12 | 5-6-0 | 3.73 | 0.897 | 0.250 | -3.7 | |
Olle Eriksson Ek | 1/1 | 0-0-1 | 4.69 | 0.872 | 0.00 | N/A |
From opening night, when he faced 48 shots in the Ducks’ comeback win over Seattle, Gibson was peppered behind the league’s worst defense. He faced 40 or more shots on 21 occasions. There were multiple mercy pulls by then-coach Dallas Eakins after the Ducks fell hopelessly behind. Gibson’s one shutout came in a 35-save effort to beat Dallas on Jan. 4. He had just two instances when he won back-to-back starts. The second was part of his best stretch, when he went 4-1-1 and stopped 216 of 230 shots.
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A third-round pick in 2018, Dostal had his finest moment so far as a pro in North America when he made 46 saves against high-powered Edmonton in a 4-3 road win over the Oilers on Dec. 17. It came two days after he got his second NHL win in a 25-save effort at Montreal. He also had home wins against Chicago and Columbus but there were rough moments as well. In consecutive starts against Buffalo and Tampa Bay, he allowed 13 goals, which skewed his numbers downward. He went 0-5-1 in his final six starts, though his save percentage was a respectable .906 over those.
Stolarz had several relief roles sprinkled throughout a season that didn’t measure up to his other two with the Ducks. He did win back-to-back starts in San Jose but his final two in wins at Arizona and Chicago were the only victories in which he allowed fewer than three goals. He got shelved after Feb. 7 due to a knee issue, ultimately undergoing surgery in March. Eriksson Ek, 24, made his NHL debut on April 8 at Arizona and stopped 34 of 39 shots in a 5-4 overtime loss to the Coyotes. He signed to play with MoDo in the SHL.
Offseason in review
While Gibson remains signed for four more seasons (including this one), the Ducks inked Dostal to a two-year extension worth $1.625 million. The contract is two-way for the coming season and will pay him $775,000 or a pro-rated amount when he’s with the Ducks, and $325,000 if he’s in the AHL. It becomes one-way in 2024-25, when he’ll make $850,000 regardless of whether he’s in the NHL or in the minors. On Aug. 7, Alex Stalock was signed to a one-year deal worth $800,000.
Three big questions for 2023-24
Is this the season when Gibson gets traded?
Unlikely. Sure, there was this summer’s conjecture but the reality is he needs to re-establish some value that’s been lost in these down years for himself and the team. The more competitive the Ducks are and the more that he’s fully engaged from minute one to minute 60, the greater the chances that his numbers will improve and he will have that look of a difference-maker. A John Gibson Comeback Tour will only help him and his club, regardless of whether or not he’s still in Anaheim for the long haul. Goalie deals, however, are tough to make at the deadline – it’s possible but usually it is someone on an expiring contract.
Is this where Gibson gets challenged for the No. 1 job?
Unlikely … but not out of the realm of possibility. Even with his numbers plunging, there has been no threat to unseat him as Anaheim’s main man. But while last year was essentially lost from the get-go, the franchise needs to start moving in the right direction when it comes to the scoreboard. Winning does that and if Gibson starts slowly like last season and either Dostal or Stalock plays well and gets victories, there could be more temptation for first-year coach Greg Cronin to give them more starts. Stalock isn’t a long-term option, but Dostal is at the front stage of his career. Young goalies have caught fire before and they can change the dynamic in a blink of an eye.
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What does Stalock bring to the Ducks?
Perspective. The 36-year-old has been a hot rookie backup, a struggling backup, a little-used backup, a lead goalie at times, and a playoff starter. He has played for talented teams that won a lot of games, middling teams that weren’t good enough or too talented to be truly bad and, in the case of last year with Chicago, had let enough talent go to openly tank their season. He has had a nerve behind his knee cut by a skate blade, suffered concussions and dealt with a threatening bout of myocarditis. He has had to build his game again in the minors on multiple occasions. Put it this way: Stalock knows how to persevere through tough times. He can bring wisdom and a sunny personality to any dressing room.
Salary-cap watch
Gibson’s $6.4 million cap number is the fourth-highest among NHL goalies, trailing only Carey Price – who is no longer active for Montreal – Sergei Bobrovsky and Andrei Vasilevskiy. But he’ll drop from that perch with the New York Islanders’ Ilya Sorokin signing an eight-year extension that averages $8.25 million and Connor Hellebuyck, Igor Shesterkin and Juuse Saros all coming up for their own new big deals with the next year or two. But with the team rebuilding and having plenty of cap space the last couple years, Gibson’s number hasn’t been a drain on their financial picture.
Special teams
None of Anaheim’s goalies fared well when the team was short-handed – Stolarz was the closest to being around the midpoint of goalies who played 15 games or more with an .857 save percentage. Gibson obviously had penalty-killing to deal with and stopped pucks at an .843 rate. Dostal struggled with an .817 save percentage in allowing 21 goals on 115 shots but his work at even strength lifted his overall stats. Stalock was quite good in a tough environment. He had a strong .908 save percentage, considering how lowly Chicago was and his .886 save percentage while short-handed was better than Hellebuyck and not far off other star goalies like Vasilevskiy and Jake Oettinger.
In the pipeline
Calle Clang and Gage Alexander each got a handful of AHL games with San Diego. Clang, 21, played in five games, winning one and posting a .904 save percentage after spending most of the year with Rögle in SHL. Alexander, 21, saw action in junior and the ECHL with Tulsa before finishing the season with a 5-7-3/3.59/.887 line in 16 games with the Gulls.
The Ducks selected Damian Clara with the last of three second-round picks in this year’s draft, a choice they gained from Boston in a package that sent Hampus Lindholm to the Bruins. Clara, 18, has great size, at 6-foot-6 and 214 pounds, and became the first Italian-born goalie to be drafted by an NHL team. He’s expected to play in Sweden again, potentially for Brynas IF in the second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan.
Final assessment
The addition of Stalock provides the Ducks with a capable NHL netminder who can push Dostal, who himself is at a place where he’s out to secure the backup job and apply a little heat to Gibson. And that should help provide an atmosphere of heightened competition, which must be spread throughout a team and organization in which losing has taken root.
The best development would be Gibson flashing more of the form that made him viewed as an elite goalie. A new coach instilling a friendlier puck-possessive system and a group of teammates committed to playing tighter will help. But it is also on Gibson to come into the season with a renewed focus on lifting his game and showing the hockey world that he’s the backbone the Ducks or another team must have to succeed.
If that doesn’t happen, the Ducks could be forced into finding any sort of an exit strategy — contract be damned.
(Photo of John Gibson: James Guillory / USA Today)
