The Anaheim Ducks will not be pushed into anything with Pavel Mintyukov
Sportsnet: Elliotte Friedman on 32 Thoughts: The Podcast – The Struggling Edmonton Oilers episode, about Pavel Mintyukov’s unhappiness in Anaheim.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
Friedman: “Mintyukov, same deal. Now I’ll say this. I had some people who didn’t like it, while Anaheim was doing really well. Kind of the same deal with Lambert, but because I was the guy reporting Mintyukov, I had some resistance to that. Like, Anaheim is doing really well, this isn’t the time for this. And I was like, OK, fair. I totally understand, but it’s out there.”
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And you know, so I just wanted to mention that. You know, Mintyukov was the 10th overall pick in 2022. He’s a very talented young kid. He made this team very quickly. But if you look at it now, he was knocked out.
Like Jackson, LaCombe is now a $9 million defenseman. He doesn’t play for him. (Olen) Zellweger did it, Zellweger has been a great partner for (Jacob) Trouba. Trouba was one of the great early season stories and Zellweger plays a very big role there. And Ian Moore, the kind of man who has now beaten Mintyukov, has played very well for them. And he recently scored the winning goal in the second match in which Mintyukov sat out.
So they have a winning hand now, but I think that’s the realism of what we’re dealing with right now in the NHL: the kids, they want to play faster. They don’t have a lot of patience, like maybe they used to have, or should have, for the American Hockey League.
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Just like I can see with (Pavel) Mintyukov. Mintyukov is a young defenseman who can move the puck. There will be interest in him.
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In Anaheim I don’t know how, what to think about this, because Verbeek, the more he is pushed, the more he gets back. So first of all, I think he’s going to say, ‘Hey, we’ll do this, I’ll do this on my time.’
And you know what, I’ll say this too. They’ve had a lot of young players who are really popping at the moment, which is to their credit. They have done very well, but at various times some of these players had problems with their ice time. And he’s always said, I’m not giving you the easy way out. Like you’re going to earn your ice time. That’s kind of his philosophy: there’s no easy way out: earn it.
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Maybe this is different. Don’t know. We’ll see in the future, but I know he won’t be forced to do anything. That’s for sure.
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