Klepov and Greer Are Answers. The Defense Is Still the Question.
The Ducks have been busy. Since I wrote about this roster's structural fragility ten days ago, they've signed OHL scoring leader Nikita Klepov to an entry-level deal, added AJ Greer on a four-year, $4.25 million AAV contract, and completed a minor forward swap with Montreal. Management is clearly in motion. The problem is that none of those moves address the part of this roster that actually ended last season.
That part was the defense. Anaheim surrendered 4.1 goals per game over their final 10 games — a number I keep returning to because it keeps mattering. That wasn't a bad week. It was a structural unraveling, and it happened because the blue line behind Jackson LaCombe had nothing left to give. LaCombe logged 24.4 minutes a night and anchored nearly everything. Pavel Mintyukov was pressed into 21.3 minutes per game down the stretch, a 30% jump from his earlier workload, as the coaching staff ran out of viable options. Now Zellweger is in Buffalo. John Carlson is in Carolina. The tier behind LaCombe hasn't gotten deeper — it's gotten thinner.
The forward void is real too, and the Klepov and Greer signings are genuine attempts to fill it. Terry's hip surgery — labral repair, five to six months out from a June procedure — means he won't be in the lineup when the season opens, and that's 46 points and 33 assists disappearing from a team that already traded away McTavish's 29 points for draft picks. Klepov is an exciting prospect, the kind of player who earns a camp invite and forces a decision. Greer brings Stanley Cup experience and the kind of physical presence that wears on opponents over a long season. My read is that both moves make the forward group more interesting. Neither one makes it whole.
What concerns me most is the gap the depth chart reveals at defense. LaCombe is a legitimate top-pairing player. After him, the production falls off a cliff — Jacob Trouba logged nearly 22 minutes a game last season and contributed at a fraction of what a starting defenseman typically provides at that workload. That's not a pairing problem; that's a structural one. The Ducks are entering 2026-27 with a blue line that already cracked under playoff pressure, having subtracted two of its members and added no obvious replacements.
The forward bets are understandable. Carlsson at $18 million AAV is the franchise anchor, Gauthier gives them a genuine goal-scorer, and Sennecke showed enough last season to project as a real contributor. The youth movement has logic to it. But the team that went 2-8 to close last season didn't lose those games because Nikita Klepov wasn't in the lineup. They lost them because the defense gave up 4.1 goals a night and nobody could stop it. Until Anaheim answers that question with something more concrete than hope and Mintyukov's extension, the offseason noise around the forwards is just that — noise covering a problem that remains exactly where they left it.