Rookie Watch: Anaheim Ducks

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Each Day until September 15th TPS will take a look at one team from the East and one team from the West and spotlight a few rookies to watch for this season. Today in the West it’s the Anaheim Ducks.

Ducks Prospect Snap Shot

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The Ducks have seen both sides of the spectrum when it comes to getting and giving away the future. They dealt picks and defenceman prospect Ladislav Smid to get Chris Pronger from Edmonton, then won a Stanley Cup. They also received picks ‘o’ plenty when the Oilers signed Dustin Penner to an offer sheet. In the last couple of years they’ve also traded away budding power forward Eric Tangradi, and traded for Swiss star Luca Sbisa when they shipped Pronger to Philadelphia. Anaheim has drafted in the top 5 six times, most recently taking Bobby Ryan 2nd overall in 2005. Ryan is starting to hit his stride.

Now here’s a look at the rest of the Ducks future.

Wednesday Re-Set

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It was an overloaded edition of The Pipeline Show last night because we chose to go guest heavy as we shifted our spotlight back north on the CHL playoffs.

Our first guest of the evening was 2009 eligible prospect Peter Holland of the Guelph Storm. The big center is currently representing Canada at the World U18 Championship in Fargo-Moorehead. He's rated as a 1st round pick by both Central Scouting and ISS and last night he told us all about his year in Guelph, initially getting passed over by Hockey Canada and his enormous disappointment until he finally was a late addition for the U18s.

We also wrapped up our in-depth NCAA coverage by speaking with Dave Starman, analyst for CBS Sports. Dave's breakdown of the Frozen Four and especially the title win by Boston University was a terrific recap of last weekend's events. Will Miami recover from their stunning collapse? How differnet will BU look next year? Does Edmonton's Kieran Millan get drafted this June?

The CHL playoffs are well underway and all 3 leagues are down to their final four teams. Kevin Forbes of Hockey's Future took us through the QMJHL which features match ups between Drummondville and Rimouski as well as Quebec taking on Shawinigan. The Voltigeurs have completely destroyed their competition so far but now they come up against a legit test in the Memorial Cup host Oceanic. Patrick Roy's Remparts needed 7 games to get passed Cape Breton and have a short turn around before they begin again against the Cataractes. Forbes gives us his opinions and predictions on how things will play out.

One of our OHL insiders is Aaron Bell who talked about the semi-final which features all four division leaders for the first time in league history. Belleville is a veteran team that has tons of playoff experience but they are taking on a very talented Brampton Battalion squad that includes Matt Duchene, Cody Hodgson, Evgeny Grachev and Thomas McCollum. The other series will be another beauty as John Tavares and the London Knights hook up with Taylor Hall's Windsor Spitfires. There is little to choose between all four clubs which makes predicting the outcome pretty tough but we all cast our fearless picks anyway.

The Kelowna Rockets were still waiting to find out who they'd face while we spoke with their play-by-play voice, Regan Bartel. Bartel talked about the potential match up against Vancouver or Spokane and then went in depth in discussing how the Rockets had dispatched Tri-City and Kamloops. Jamie Benn, Colin Long, Cody Almond, Tyler Myers, Mikael Backlund and Ryley Grantham were all talked about. The Rockets and the Vancouver Giants begin their Western Conference final on Saturday April 18th.

Finally, we also played some Bad Ass Trivia and then got into the NHL Draft Lottery which was held while we were on the air. Dean and I started throwing names around for the top 10, part of which you can see in our first mock draft that Millard posted last night (see below).

If you missed any segments of the show last night, no worries because you can visit our site and listen to any of the archived interviews from the last four years. April 14th archived audio.