With the Anaheim Ducks celebrating their 30th anniversary this season, now is the perfect time to look back. In the last 30 years, the Ducks have made history – from the Disney days to winning the first Stanley Cup in California and the decade of contention that followed – and now is the time to look back at the players that made these moments possible.
Related: Anaheim Ducks: Counting Down the 30 Greatest Moments (5-1)
This is the fifth and final installment of the countdown. We’re down to the top five. These players gave their best years to Anaheim and are closely tied to the organization’s success. Previous entries can be found below.
5. Corey Perry
Corey Perry has been one of the more polarizing players in the NHL throughout his career. For 14 seasons in Anaheim, his scoring ability and knack for getting under his opponents’ skin had him revered as a “saintly” figure among Ducks fans. Opposing fans have preferred using his more down-to-earth nickname. All names aside, even his most ardent detractors can’t deny how good Perry was in Anaheim.
Perry broke into the NHL alongside fellow 2003 first-rounder Ryan Getzlaf, and the duo were quick to find chemistry together. With Dustin Penner on Perry’s opposite wing, Anaheim’s “Kid Line” was one of many driving factors for the Ducks’ Stanley Cup victory in 2007.
Perry and Getzlaf continued to improve and take on leadership roles, with Perry serving as an alternate captain from 2013-2019. His best season came in 2010-11, where a hat trick during the 80th game of the season helped him reach the 50-goal plateau. It was the first 50-goal season for the Ducks since Teemu Selanne in 1997-98, and he won the Rocket Richard and Hart Trophies. To this day, Perry is the only Ducks player to have won the Hart Trophy.
Perry was bought out of his contract in 2019 in the midst of some down years for both the organization and the player. He’s rebounded by reaching the Stanley Cup Final in three of the four years since leaving. Despite the buyout, Ducks fans still hold him in high regard, and I would expect his No. 10 to be retired at some point in the future.
4. Jean-Sebastian Giguere
Jean-Sebastian Giguere had the unenviable task of being the immediate successor to Guy Hebert, Anaheim’s first-ever player and primary backstop for their entire existence. He responded to the pressure by orchestrating one of the greatest Cinderella runs in NHL history.
Giguere’s run in the 2003 postseason began with one of the biggest upsets in the 21st century when the eight-seed Mighty Ducks swept the defending Cup champion Detroit Red Wings. He was nothing short of amazing, stopping 165 out of 171 shots (.965 save percentage), including a 63-save effort in triple overtime of the first game of the series.
Giguere would continue to make the Western Conference look silly, putting up another 60-save effort in a six-game series victory over the Dallas Stars. In the conference final, he held the Minnesota Wild to a single goal in another sweep to help the Mighty Ducks reach the Stanley Cup Final. Anaheim lost in seven games to the New Jersey Devils, but Giguere’s historic run earned him Conn Smythe honors as the MVP of the postseason. He is still the most recent player to earn the trophy without winning the Cup.
After a few inconsistent years, Giguere re-established himself as Anaheim’s primary goaltender in the 2007 postseason. That year, he helped the Ducks finish what they were so close to achieving in 2003 by beating the Ottawa Senators and taking home the Stanley Cup. He continued to play in Anaheim until 2009. He is still the club leader in several goaltending categories, including wins (206), games played (447), and shutouts (32).
3. Paul Kariya
For fans of a certain age, Paul Kariya was the first reason to root for the Ducks. Selected with the franchise’s first-ever entry draft selection in 1993, Kariya was a star the moment he reached NHL ice. He was one of the most gifted wingers of his era, with a 100-point season in his second year and a Hart finalist nod by his third. During this run of dominance, the Ducks traded for a winger on his opposite side. We’ll talk about Selanne more in a moment, but the duo took the league by storm. By 1996, Kariya was named captain, the youngest in the league at the time.
Kariya’s 5-foot-10 frame made him susceptible to big hits and concussions played an unfortunate role in his career. He had at least six in his career, though the lack of proper protocols and reporting in that era suggests there may have been more. A national television audience was watching Game 6 of the 2003 Stanley Cup Final when an open-ice hit from New Jersey’s Scott Stevens knocked Kariya to the ice. The broadcast cameras panned back across the neutral zone to show Kariya’s motionless body. He eventually got up and hobbled back to the locker room with the help of some teammates. It would be reasonable to suspect that Kariya would be out for the rest of the series, but he returned to the bench minutes later, and the goal he scored is one of the most electric moments in franchise history.
2003 was Kariya’s last year with the Ducks, and he played for six more years before concussions forced his retirement. The bitter breakup with Anaheim combined with frustrations over player safety made him reclusive in his early retirement. All Ducks fans had to remember him would be VHS-era highlights and an overwhelming lack of closure. Fortunately, signs of a reunion became clear when he appeared in a promotional video during the 2017 postseason (from, “Fan Helps Paul Kariya with the Ducks ‘Paint it Orange’ Campaign,” Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2017). In 2018, the organization finally retired his No. 9, forever enshrining him alongside his linemate Selanne. Today, Kariya is a regular in and around the clubhouse and the team even brought him on to help search for a new general manager in 2022.
2. Teemu Selanne
Everything about Kariya’s personality — quiet, reserved, easy-going — was met in stark contrast with Teemu Selanne. “The Finnish Flash” was traded to the Ducks in 1996 and his boisterous personality resulted in one of the most exciting odd-couple duos in NHL history. While the demeanor of the two were vastly different, they often looked like they shared a brain on the ice. Selanne had back-to-back 50-goal seasons from 1996-1998, and a league-leading 47 goals in 1999 earned him the Rocket Richard Trophy in its first year as an award.
The struggling Ducks traded Selanne to the San Jose Sharks in 2001 as a nagging knee injury was forcing him into an early decline. After the 2005 lockout, he signed a one-year deal to return to Anaheim and rejuvenated his career with a 90-point season. He had another 90-point year in 2007, and he added an additional 15 in the postseason to help the Ducks win the Stanley Cup. At 36 years old, he was the oldest player on the roster.
Selanne stayed in Anaheim until his retirement in 2014. By the time he hung up his skates, he had re-written the record book in Anaheim. His 966 games, 457 goals, 531 assists, 988 points, and 13 hat tricks were all team records by his retirement. In 2015, Selanne was the first player to have his number (8) retired by the Ducks. He and Kariya were both named to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2017.
Selanne’s retirement in 2014 was at the conclusion of their 20th season as a franchise. In those first 20 years, he was very likely the greatest player in franchise history. In fact, he still has a case to be named their greatest player as we approach their 30th anniversary season. However, I think he’s been overtaken by one of the players who grew up in the system and learned under him.
1. Ryan Getzlaf
Ryan Getzlaf was the first of Anaheim’s two first-round picks in the 2003 Entry Draft. The 6-foot-4 center first appeared with the Ducks for 57 games in 2005-06. The following year, he was the man in the middle for the previously mentioned “Kids Line” as the 21-year-old Getzlaf became a Stanley Cup champion. He was the team’s top-line center by 2008 and held onto that position for the next 15 years. In 2010, he succeeded Niedermayer as the team’s captain and went on to don the ‘C’ for a franchise-record 12 seasons.
On top of the longevity of his career, Getzlaf was also a big-time producer. He was a point-per-game player in eight seasons, including an 87-point 2013-14 season where he finished second in the Hart Trophy voting to Sidney Crosby. He often shined in the postseason as well with 120 points in 125 playoff games. Even as he got older, he could control the pace of play. In the 2017 second round series against the Edmonton Oilers, the 31-year-old Getzlaf turned back the clock by scoring 10 points and averaging nearly 25 minutes a night to help the Ducks win in seven games.
On Oct. 31, 2021, Getzlaf recorded the primary assist on a Troy Terry goal to pass Selanne with his 989th point as a Duck. He retired in 2022 with 1,017 points and 1,157 games played, the only player in franchise history to reach those milestones entirely with the Ducks. His case for the Hall of Fame might be borderline, but the Honda Center rafters will be displaying his No. 15 in due time.
Getzlaf arrived in a transitionary time for the franchise. He was a Mighty Duck before the team dropped the adjective, and he was a budding star as they became champions. He then assumed the captaincy from one of the greatest players in NHL history and created his own legacy over the following decade. His retirement comes at a time when the team is, once again, in transition. The current five-year playoff drought has led to some high-end draft picks that have already made an impact. The organization is ready to turn the corner, and some of these players figure to make their way onto this kind of list the next time the Ducks have an anniversary season.
