Camp Opens. Terry Doesn't.

Training camp is here, and the Ducks' most important playmaker is not. Troy Terry — 33 assists and 46 points last season, the quiet engine behind most of what worked offensively — is still months out from his hip surgery, with a return window that points to January at the earliest. That's a long time to ask a young roster to hold things together.

The forward group that takes the ice this week looks nothing like the one that finished 43-39. McTavish is in St. Louis. Kreider is in Montreal. Zellweger is in Buffalo. What came back in return — draft picks, Sean Farrell, AJ Greer, Nikita Klepov on an entry-level deal — is unproven at this level, and the pieces that were supposed to fill the middle of the lineup simply aren't there yet. Beckett Sennecke is the most established name left among the secondary forwards, and he's 20 years old.

So it falls to Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier, which is where management always intended to land eventually. Carlsson's 48 points in 49 games last season made the case for the five-year commitment; Gauthier's six-year deal signed Tuesday makes the partnership official. They're good enough to be the foundation. The question camp will start answering is whether there's enough around them to make the first half of the season functional while Terry works his way back.

My read: it's going to be a rough November.