The Anaheim Ducks defense is a far cry from the Stanley Cup winning unit that dominated its way to a championship through both brutality (Chris Pronger) and finesse (Scott Niedermayer). I guess that’s what happens when you lose a Norris Trophy winner per summer.
The Ducks moved Steve Eminger to the New York Rangers for bruiser Aaron Voros and prospect Ryan Hillier. The OC Regsiter shares the reasoning.
While he often logged significant minutes, Eminger was one of the main reasons why the Ducks’ defense struggled mightily as a unit. He was demoted for all but one game over a month-long stretch from Dec. 3 to Jan. 2.
Eminger was scratched 18 times in all and finished with four goals and 12 assists in 63 games. The seven-year veteran had a plus-1 rating but that didn’t indicate the times he was often pushed around in his end and forced into making mistakes under pressure.
The deal appears to further weaken a blue line that’s down to Lubomir Visnovsky, James Wisniewski, Sheldon Brookbank and recently acquired Toni Lydman as far as proven NHL players but it’s also a sign that they’d rather have someone else than Eminger, who is due to make $1.25 million.
General Manager Bob Murray is looking to add another top-four defenseman but the move of Eminger could also be a sign that they may be ready to fast-track the development of some youngsters in the system by opening up a spot.
Now we Ducks fans here at BoC may have been a bit hard on ol’ Eminger -- one of his biggest problems was showing up in the immediate departure of Chris Pronger. We had become so used to overall blueline competency that the mistakes of Eminger (and others for sure, Mr. Whitney) became a bit more glaring. His inability to hit the net on his shots, his unwillingness to even pretend to play the body -- these failings became his traits, in a way. All we could see was shortcomings.