ANAHEIM, Calif. – The Anaheim Ducks fired coach Greg Cronin after two years in the position on Saturday.
Cronin posted a record of 62-87-15 in two years as head coach. Cronin reportedly had one year left on a three-year contract, per Pierre LeBrun of TSN.
Cronin inherited a team that posted the worst record in franchise history in 2022-23, and in his first season at the helm, the Ducks improved by just one point in the standings (59 points) in 2023-24.
In 2024-25, Anaheim’s defensive analytics and special teams remained in the bottom rungs of the league all season, and despite phenomenal goaltending, second-half improvements from its young players and the NHL’s second-best year-over-year standings-point increase, the team missed the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a seventh straight season.
The Ducks finished under the .500 mark for the seventh consecutive season, but at 35-37-10, Anaheim posted its first 80-point season since 2018-19.
“I want to personally thank Greg for his tireless work and dedication to the team,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said. “He is responsible in many ways for the improvement we’ve seen from our young core. However, after several weeks of careful evaluation, I concluded we needed a change in direction and a new voice. This was an extremely difficult decision for me to make, but I felt it was necessary to continue our progress toward becoming a Stanley Cup contender that I know we can be.”
Anaheim ended the year 30th in goals per game with the league’s worst power play (11.8%) and 23rd in goals against per game with the league’s 29th-ranked penalty kill.
The noted improvements for Anaheim’s record and young offensive talent only seemed to highlight the deficiencies of the Ducks defensive scheme and special teams.
Where could Anaheim have been with a league-average power play? How much better could the record or goaltending been with a half-step better defensive coverage?
“I think we spent way too much time in the D zone,” defenseman Olen Zellweger said in his exit interview on Friday. “I think there's evidence from the shot attempts we give up. Just a ton. I don't think that's discrediting our effort or compete level.”
Analytically at five-on-five, the Ducks were last in the league in expected goals allowed per game and 21st in the league in expected goals per game, which combined for a 30th-ranked expected goals share, according to Natural Stat Trick.
The Ducks season was a bit of a dichotomy in a couple different directions.
Where team performance dragged, there was individual growth from the Ducks’ young crop. Where strong goaltending kept it close early for Anaheim’s early offensive sag, the goal production surged late, as goaltending returned to the mean.
The only constants for the Ducks were that porous defense and inept special teams.
Cronin came to Anaheim with a history of being a strong developmental coach guiding Colorado’s AHL team the Colorado Eagles over the previous five seasons with four playoff appearances. Nearly 20 of his Eagles players made their NHL debuts with the Avalanche in his tenure.
Cronin also previously coached the New York Islanders’ AHL affiliate and was an assistant at the NHL level with the Islanders and Toronto Maple Leafs.
“Being a young team, I felt we needed a teacher of the finer points of the game,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said when Cronin was hired, “and someone who has worked extensively over time with talented young players, helping them develop into successful NHL players.”
On an individual basis, there was inarguably development of Anaheim's young core, but each player’s path featured its own unique set of circumstances.
Cutter Gauthier did not score a goal until his 17th game while getting bumped down to the third and fourth lines to learn NHL-level habits. However, Gauthier finished the season back on the top line, top four in rookie scoring and as the team’s hottest goal-scorer.
Mason McTavish was in a half-season long slump and was labelled as a “third-line guy” by Cronin in January, but McTavish led his own scoring surge and ended up as the team’s leading goal scorer. Similarly, Leo Carlsson struggled to generate any consistent impact in his sophomore season until his trip to the 4 Nations Face-Off with Team Sweden seemingly ignited a scorching stretch run.
The young defensive trio of Jackson LaCombe, Pavel Mintyukov and Olen Zellweger struggled for consistency fighting for ice time amid a logjam of left-handed defensemen. While after LaCombe locked in from December onward to be arguably Anaheim’s best player, Zellweger and Mintyukov continued to be shuttled in and out of the line-up in favor of Drew Helleson, who emerged from AHL San Diego to lock down a right-side spot in place of the more offensively gifted left-handers.
From a team perspective, the story of Cronin’s second year in Anaheim is a tale of two halves of the season and two halves of the ice.
In the first half of the season, the Ducks were carried by stellar goaltending that masked abysmal defensive metrics in Anaheim’s own zone.
Anaheim’s netminders combined for the third-most goals saved above expected (GSAx) in the league, according to MoneyPuck. Ducks goalies were 26th in that metric last season.
John Gibson posted the fifth-best GSAx per 60 minutes and Lukáš Dostál the 19th-best GSAx/60 (minimum 20 games).
Dostál and Gibson were under fire throughout the season, as the Ducks allowed NHL highs in shots per game. Dostál led the league with five 40-save performances.
Through the first 20 games of the season, Anaheim was last in the league in expected goals allowed per game but 15th in actual goals allowed, a difference of nearly a full goal (3.23 xGA to 2.29 GA). That trend continued through the next 20 games, where the Ducks were 31st in expected over that stretch and just 18th in actual goals allowed.
Anaheim’s defensive numbers pointed to flaws in Cronin’s preferred man-to-man defensive structure and put heightened focus on roster decisions regarding ice time for the Ducks’ young defensemen amid a logjam of veteran defenders.
The second half of the season saw the emergence of Anaheim’s 24-and-under core.
In the final 41 games of the season, 22-year-old McTavish (35 points), 20-year-old Carlsson (30 points), 21-year-old Gauthier (26 points) and 24-year-old LaCombe (25 points) were the Ducks top four point-scorers, with McTavish surging into the team’s goal-scoring lead and LaCombe netting the most goals by an Anaheim defender in 14 years.
In the first half of the season, Anaheim was in the bottom third of the league in generating chances and even lower in terms of actual goals scored. Spurred by its young guns, the Ducks started putting the puck in the net in the second half of the season.
In the first 20 games of the second half, Anaheim was 25th in the league in expected goals per game but 13th in actual goals scored per game. In the final 22 games of the season, the Ducks improved to 13th in expected goals per game and seventh in actual goals scored per game.
“Not that we wanna play a track-meet style, obviously there's risk involved there,” Zellweger said, “but when we got those three-on-twos and stuff, we were super dangerous. You could almost feel it in the rink when the game opened up for us, because offensively, we were playing with any team that sort of way.”
Through the highs and lows, the Ducks managed to compete for their stated goal for the season: “meaningful games.”
In training camp and throughout the campaign, Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said the goal was for the team to be competitive and play in “meaningful games” late in the season. As the calendar turned to March, Anaheim was six points out of a playoff spot with 24 games to play.
However, after reaching that “meaningful games” threshold, the Ducks went 6-9-0 in March and were officially eliminated from playoff contention on April 3 with seven games remaining. Anaheim finished out April with a 3-5-1 record in the month, including a four-game losing streak to end the season.
Whether it was the underlying defensive metrics or the results down the stretch, the Greg Cronin era is over in Anaheim, and the Ducks begin to look forward once again.
