Brossoit Is the Plan. There Is No Plan B.

The Ducks enter 2026-27 with one goalie who has logged meaningful playing time: Laurent Brossoit. That's it. No established backup, no viable second option with game experience behind him. For a team already missing Troy Terry and carrying a defense that allowed nearly four goals a game down the stretch last season, that's a thin margin.

The forward and blue-line holes have drawn most of the attention this camp — understandably, given everything that left this summer. But the goaltending situation is quieter and arguably just as fragile. A typical NHL rotation runs two goalies who can hold a game. Right now, Anaheim has one who has demonstrated he can, and nothing behind him that's been tested.

My read is this becomes the most urgent unaddressed need on the roster if Brossoit misses any time. The defense in front of him is younger and thinner than it was a year ago, when the back end still fell apart in April and May. Mintyukov is absorbing far more ice time than he was built to carry this early in his career. That combination — a shorthanded blue line, a defense already prone to late-season collapse, and a single goalie with no proven backup — is the kind of structural gap that tends to surface around game 50, not in September.