By nightfall Thursday, Ducks general manager Brian Burke and senior vice president of hockey operations Bob Murray might know who they want to become head coach of the club’s new American League affiliate, the Iowa Chops.

Then again, they might not.

Despite the awkward timing of the job search, with training camp set to open next month, the Ducks plan to complete interviews with six candidates by the end of the day. Depending on how things go, they might stop there and choose their man, or perhaps expand the search.

The position in Iowa officially became available Tuesday, when the Buffalo Sabres announced the hiring of Kevin Dineen to remain coach of the Portland Pirates. Dineen has coached in Portland the past three seasons, when the Pirates had a working agreement with the Ducks, who announced in June that they would shift their AHL affiliation to Des Moines, Iowa. Read the rest of this entry »

Ducks general manager Brian Burke returned Wednesday from Lake Placid, N.Y., after having watched a portion of USA Hockey’s annual national junior evaluation camp.

From the nine-day camp that began Friday and runs through Saturday will come the U.S. team that will compete in the World Junior Championships set for Dec. 26 through Jan. 5 in Ottawa.

Two Ducks prospects, center Eric Tangradi and defenseman Jake Gardiner, are among 53 players from 17 states vying for spots on the U.S. squad.

Tangradi, a second-round selection in the 2007 NHL entry draft, is a 6-foot-3, 191-pounder from Philadelphia who has played the past two seasons with the Belleville Bulls in the junior Ontario Hockey League.

“I saw him skate four times,” Burke said. “He had one exceptional outing, one good, one fair and one where he looked tired. He’s a big kid, goes to net hard. I think he has a shot to make the team.” Read the rest of this entry »

Armed with a new two-year contract extension that carries through the 2010-11 NHL season, Ducks coach Randy Carlyle, right, possesses job security, as well as a Stanley Cup championship, six playoff-series victories and two 100-point seasons on his resume in only three seasons.

But where does Carlyle rank among his peers?

Denver Post columnist Terry Frei has taken a stab at answering that question, as well as many others, in an interesting piece he did that can be found on ESPN.com. Rather than ranking the coaches by numbers, Frei chose to lump them into the following categories – the elite, the proven, the jury’s still out, the suspect and what amounts to the unknown.

Despite Carlyle’s impressive credentials, Frei does not list him among the elite, but rather among the proven. Ducks general manager Brian Burke might find it interesting that the man at the top of Frei’s “elite” list is Carlyle’s predecessor in Anaheim, Mike Babcock of the Stanley Cup champion Detroit Red Wings. Babcock left the Ducks for Detroit in 2005, after new Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli hired Burke as general manager, and Burke offered Babcock only a one-year contract.

Another former Ducks coach listed among the proven is Ron Wilson, who accepted a very difficult rebuilding job with the Toronto Maple Leafs after having been fired by the San Jose Sharks at the conclusion of last season. Former Ducks coach Craig Hartsburg, the new bench boss of the Ottawa Senators, is on Frei’s “suspect” list.

Certainly, any undertaking such as Frei’s leaves plenty of room for argument. Comments are welcome.

The Ducks are in the market for a head coach for their new American League affiliate, the Iowa Chops, with the Buffalo Sabres announcing Tuesday that they are hiring Kevin Dineen to remain coach of the Portland Pirates.

The Buffalo News and the Portland Press Herald both reported Tuesday the impending announcement of Dineen’s hiring, with official word from the Pirates coming later.

An 18-season NHL veteran, Dineen was one of Brian Burke’s first hires after he took over as Ducks general manager in 2005. Dineen has coached in Portland the past three seasons, twice leading the Pirates to the AHL’s Eastern Conference finals.

With the Ducks having announced June 3 that they would shift their top minor-league affiliation to Des Moines, Iowa, their coaching situation has been in limbo since. Dineen’s name was bandied about in discussions for several NHL head-coaching openings, including the Kings’ before they hired Terry Murray last month.

With the Sabres having entered into an affiliation agreement with the Pirates, and none of Dineen’s NHL opportunities having come to fruition, Dineen’s comfort level in Maine won out over a potential move to Iowa.

Burke is interviewing candidates for the coaching job in Iowa this week, he said Tuesday.

In the midst of last season’s opening-round Stanley Cup playoff loss to the Dallas Stars, with the Ducks headed toward defeat but not yet beaten, a team official pondered the prospect of such an early exit only 10½ months after the club had captured Lord Stanley’s prized mug.

A huge disappointment? Absolutely.

A silver lining? Quite possibly.

It has been 106 days since the Ducks watched a 1-0 lead vaporize when the Stars scored four third-period goals to cap their six-game, series victory April 20 in Dallas. And yet the Ducks are still a month and a half away from opening training camp and 66 days away from their 2008-09 regular-season opener, an Oct. 9 road date against the defending NHL Pacific Division champion San Jose Sharks.

And the point is? Read the rest of this entry »

Some junior news to pass along here …

Chase Balisy of Fullerton was named to the USA under-17 national roster announced Friday.

Balisy was one of four California players, all forwards, on the 21-player national team for 2008-09. The others are Emerson Etem and Matthew Nieto of Long Beach and Shane Sooth of Canyon Country. …

Meanwhile, Ducks prospects Eric O’Dell and Nicolas Deschamps are among those participating in Canada’s Junior Team Evaluation Camp, where O’Dell was interviewed by NHL.com.

O’Dell and Deschamps were second round picks in June’s NHL draft.

Apparently not satisfied with any one look for an extended period of time, the NHL is once again experimenting with third jerseys.

Blogger Howard Berger reports that the NHL will unveil new looks for roughly 20 teams for the 2008-09 season. Some of the changes sound as drastic as the league’s first go-around with third jerseys, which brought us the ill-advised Long John Fisherman’s logo for the New York Islanders, while other changes are minor. 

A Ducks official said the club does not plan on wearing a third jersey. This is probably good news for longtime Ducks fans, who bore witness to some of the franchise’s, um, experimental alternate jerseys of the past (above).

The Ducks changed to their current look in 2006, when they shed the Mighty Ducks name.

We all love lists. Especially in the middle of summer, when hockey fans are trying to wade through the dead of baseball season until training camp starts in September.

ESPN took the liberty of assembling mid-summer NHL team rankings. The Ducks still find themselves where they were at the end of last season: looking up at Detroit, San Jose and Dallas in the Western Conference. 

It speaks to the quality of the Pacific Division that three of its five teams are ranked in the top four in the West.

And things figure to get tougher overall with Chicago, Edmonton and Calgary nipping at everybody’s heels.

The offseason is not over yet, but which team has improved the most in the offseason?

With the free agency period slowing to a crawl and training camp more than a month away, it’s time for offseason news from north of the border.

Ducks winger Corey Perry (right) is using his offseason to assist to a friend in need in his hometown Peterborough in Ontario. Here’s the story courtesy of the Peterborough Examiner.

OK, before we get to Brett Favre let’s get this out of the away regarding the Iowa Chops, the Ducks’ new AHL affilate.

The name, Chops, is a marketing tie-in with the Iowa Pork Producers Association and refers to a thick, center-cut of pork known in Midwestern circles as an Iowa chop.

The team’s logo (right) is a pig’s head (I think) with a head full of steam. The team store is called the Chop Shop.  Players who are called up from Iowa to the Ducks are presumably the choicest cuts.

Anyway, the organization apparently has a Bill Veeck-like sense of publicity. In the spirit of zany minor league promotions, the Chops announced they are offering Packers legend Favre a contract to lace up the skates and join the team.

Team president Steve Nitzel said the Chops have contacted Favre’s agent in order to lure him to Des Moines. 

“We live in a beautiful, Midwestern city here in Des Moines and play in a state-of-the-art venue at Wells Fargo Arena, so that meets Brett’s criteria of places to play,” Nitzel said in a release.

“We wanted to be the first team to offer him something new and challenging, and I believe he will enjoy the thrill of raising the Calder Cup just as much as he did the Vince Lombardi Trophy back in 1997.”

Should the Chops raise that Calder Cup trophy, it would be documented by the Des Moines Register, which, inconveniently, is not affiliated with the Orange County Register, but is presumably capable of going into the corners to get the meat of the story.