The Anaheim Ducks will head into the 2022-23 season with three young stars in the final year of their respective contracts.
Jamie Drysdale,
Troy Terry and
Trevor Zegras are all set to become restricted free agents at the conclusion of the season.
Despite that, Anaheim Ducks General Manager Pat Verbeek is in no rush to re-sign the trio, telling the media that the team won't negotiate new contracts during the season.
"That way, the players don't have a distraction," Verbeek said. "It gives the players the full year to kind of just concentrate on playing hockey and then at the appropriate time we'll talk with the agents and do what we got to do."
He added, "We're going to have to see how their years go this year, and then obviously, we're going to have to get some new contracts out. Having flexibility with the cap is vital moving ahead. At the end of the day, there's only so much money to go around. We have to make sure we can all fit it in."
The Ducks are set to have a ton of available cap space next summer with
John Klingberg,
Dmitry Kulikov and
Kevin Shattenkirk, among others, all becoming unrestricted free agents on July 1st.
According to CapFriendly, the Ducks are projected to have $43,660,833 in cap space following the 2022-23 campaign.
Terry and Zegras finished the 2021-22 season first and second in points on the Ducks with 67 and 61 respectively, while Drysdale had 32 points in 81 games.
Source:
theScore
