Anaheim's teardown puts Gibson on the firing line

The Ducks' goalie is making some traumatic history during a lost season.

Maybe you’ve had nightmares involving dozens of hockey pucks, hurtling toward your head at great speed and evil intention. John Gibson has those nightly.

Although he is compensated well to endure them, you can’t make a deal with the trauma.

Three times in a 15-day span, Gibson had to make 50 or more saves for the Anaheim Ducks, who once had Chris Pronger and Scott Niedermayer in front of their goaltender and now have the Maginot Line. That’s 51 saves at Carolina and Florida and 53 at Pittsburgh. The Ducks went 1-1-1 in those games. They have won 20 games this season, out of 61, and only Columbus has gleaned fewer points. Twelve of those wins have come with Gibson in net.

Sixty years ago, Lorne “Gump” Worsley had three games of 50-plus games in a single month. That was with the New York Rangers, who were usually in a heated battle with Boston for fifth place in a six-team league. Worsley was a 5-foot-7, crew-cut imp who won two Vezina Trophies when he tended goal for Montreal, and he also was third in Hart (MVP) Trophy voting in 1956 when he faced 576 more shots on goal than any other goalie and still had a winning record and a .923 save percentage. In 1963 he was targeted 555 more times than anyone else, and within 7 days in January he snatched 52, 50 and 50 shots against Chicago, Toronto and Detroit.

As a Ranger, The Gumper was once asked which team gave him the most difficulty. “The Rangers,” he replied. He said he knew it was time to retire “when the sons of guys who used to score on me started scoring on me.”

That has not happened to Gibson because most of the sons of the players he faces are toddlers. That is not to say those kids wouldn’t find a peaceful place in front of his net. Against the Ducks you could run a day-care center there.

Gibson makes $6.4 million through 2027. He has not demanded a trade to ward off PTSD, but, on the rare occasions when he does speak his mind, he has urged management to assemble a better team.

That is currently not the game plan for general manager Pat Verbeek, in his first full season. The Ducks are squarely in the fight for “Dishonor For Connor.” They have dedicated this season toward moving into prime draft lottery position, so they can take Connor Bedard, the goal machine for the Regina Pats, with the No. 1 pick.

In fairness, the Ducks would be OK with the No. 2 pick, who is supposed to be 6-foot-2 center Adam Fantelli of Michigan. This is one of the most bountiful drafts since the gold mine of 2003. Whether it can make their fans forget this ghastly season is another issue. Going through something like that can increase your former-fan base.

At midseason of 2021-22, the Ducks were thinking about a playoff spot, or at least the players were. Such a playoff would have been quick and painful, but it would have shown Trevor Zegras, Troy Terry and Jamie Drysdale, the supposed young nucleus, what the big games are like and how to meet them. But when Verbeek took over, he called in the demo squad. Defensemen Hampus Lindholm and Josh Manson were exported, along with winger Rickard Rakell.

Any pretensions of toughness disappeared with Manson, who helped Colorado win a Stanley Cup and brought a second-round pick this season. Lindholm is a Norris Trophy contender for the great and powerful Boston Bruins. For him, the Ducks got a 2022 first-round pick, which became center Nathan Gaucher, who has 41 points in 38 games for the Quebec Ramparts in junior hockey and was a member of Canada’s gold medalists at the World Juniors. The Ducks also got defenseman Urho Vaakaninen, who is minus-16 in 23 Ducks’ games this season.

Rakell has 21 goals for the Penguins. They gave Anaheim a second-round pick in 2022. That became 19-year-old Tristan Luneau, a defenseman who has 19 goals for the Gatineau Olympiques.

The Ducks had their own No. 10 pick in the first round of that draft and took Russian defenseman Pavel Mintyukov, who has a point a game for the Ottawa 67s. He is considered a prize, but most prospects are considered innocent until proven guilty, and it’s always the fallback position for the GM who’s a teardown specialist. Wait until you see what we’ve got down on the farm! Ducks fans heard that about Sam Steel, Max Jones and Jacob Larsson, too. As World Series-winning manager Jim Leyland once said, “They’re not prospects, they’re minor league players.”

So the Ducks have three second-round picks in this draft along with their own lottery-bound selection, although they’ll only have a 25 percent chance of getting Bedard even if they fulfill their ambition and nail down the league’s worst record. That belongs to Columbus, which got worse Tuesday by trading two useful rentals to the Kings for Jonathan Quick.

The Ducks also signed defenseman John Klingberg with the naked hope that he would be worth a first-rounder at the trade deadline, which is Friday. But Klingberg’s play (minus-28) hasn’t merited such interest. The Ducks could also make Adam Henrique available, with his experience and faceoff skills.

The bottom line is that Lindholm, Rakell and Manson, all of whom signed nice long-term deals with their new clubs, will likely be far more productive than anything the Ducks got in return, unless you count the collateral possibility that those deals will lead to Bedard or Fantelli.

NHL general managers have the toughest job in the big-four sports. Their salary cap is tight and unforgiving. Unlike football, the contracts are guaranteed. Unlike basketball, there are no Bird, Early Bird, Big Bird, Silver Bird, mid-level, top-level, or on-the-level exceptions, or salary cap thresholds, that eventually allow the top teams to get whomever they want.

Because of that, the “windows” are tight. Chicago just traded Patrick Kane, a former first-overall pick and possibly the best American-born player in the history of the league. He, Jonathan Toews and Duncan Keith were at the forefront of three Stanley Cups. Now Kane is with the Rangers.

So it’s tricky to be good long-term. Not impossible, though. The Penguins have made 16 playoffs in succession, primarily because of Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin but also because management has made the tough calls and found a way to develop young, inexpensive players in the minors who can contribute.

The Bruins will make the playoffs for the seventh year in a row and the 14th time in 16 years. Some thought they would turn stale this time around. Instead they are 47-8-5, having worked the cap expertly to keep Brad Marchand, Patrice Bergeron and David Pastrnak together.

The Ducks once claimed such continuity. They were in the postseason six straight times, and 12 of 15. Included was a Stanley Cup championship and a 7-game Stanley Cup Final loss to New Jersey.

Now they plead with their fans for time, and who has an abundance of that? Certainly not John Gibson, not when a blindfold might work as well as a mask.