Terry's Hip Doesn't Just Hurt Him. It Hurts Everyone Around Him.
The narrow path to Anaheim's first playoff appearance in years runs through a very specific version of this roster: Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier as the engine, Troy Terry as the connective tissue, and enough functional depth behind them to keep opponents honest. Strip Terry out for the first two months — or more — and that path doesn't disappear, but it gets considerably harder to walk. The Ducks finished 43-39 last season, missed the playoffs, and did so with Terry posting 33 assists and 46 points in 48 games. He was their most reliable playmaker, the one who made the offense feel like a system rather than a collection of individual moments. Now that role belongs to whoever shows up, and right now, that answer is genuinely unclear.
The case for optimism exists, but it requires naming its parts honestly. Carlsson is locked in at $18 million AAV and ranked among the NHL's elite centers — the franchise cornerstone is not in question. Gauthier, coming off 42 points in his sophomore campaign and recognized as one of the league's top wingers, gives Anaheim a second legitimate threat. Beckett Sennecke produced 37 points last season and figures to absorb more responsibility. That is a credible top three. What it is not is a group that has proven it can carry a team through a difficult stretch without veteran support in the middle of the lineup. We saw what happens when this roster gets stretched thin: in the final 10 games of last season, the Ducks scored at a rate noticeably below their earlier pace while the defense simultaneously allowed 4.1 goals per game. Both sides of the puck collapsed at once. Terry was present for that collapse. Imagine it without him.
The offseason moves tell you management understands the problem, even if the solutions carry real uncertainty. AJ Greer brings Stanley Cup experience on a four-year deal. Sean Farrell arrives from the AHL. Nikita Klepov, the OHL scoring leader, signed his entry-level contract in July and will now try to make the jump to professional hockey without a transition year. These are not the kinds of additions that change a team's ceiling; they are the kind that are supposed to prevent a floor collapse. Whether they do that job depends entirely on development timelines that nobody can guarantee.
What concerns me most isn't the first month. Teams survive early absences. What concerns me is the cumulative weight. Last season, Mintyukov's workload jumped nearly five minutes per game as the defense deteriorated down the stretch — the Ducks were leaning on a young defenseman harder than they should have because the depth behind him had evaporated. That same dynamic is coming for the forwards. When the team hits a rough patch in November or December — and every team does — the question is who steadies the room. Terry, at 18.4 minutes a game and a plus-8, was part of that steadying function. Greer and Farrell are not equivalent replacements. Klepov is a rookie. Sennecke, for all his promise, finished last season at minus-10.
The one-goal mastery that papered over these structural problems in 2025-26 is not a repeatable strategy. Going 24-12 in one-goal games was a gift; teams that win at that rate without the underlying quality to support it tend to regress sharply. The Ducks cannot plan around variance. They need Terry back and functional before the season reaches its critical stretch, and they need the players filling his role in the interim to do more than just survive. The path to the playoffs exists — Carlsson and Gauthier are real, LaCombe is elite, the draft capital is real — but it requires the depth additions to actually hold the line for two months while the team's most important connector heals. That is a lot to ask of a group that has never been asked to do it before.