IRVINE, Calif. — Now that he’s in the general manager’s chair, the Anaheim Ducks’ Pat Verbeek has earned a reputation around the NHL as a tough negotiator. The Athletic recently polled 20 agents who represent hundreds of players across the league, and seven pointed to Verbeek and his assistant, Jeff Solomon, as driving hard bargains in contract talks.
That is evident in extensions for his top restricted free agents. Troy Terry reached the arbitration hearing stage before getting his seven-year deal. Lengthy contract battles for Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale resulted in three-year bridge deals before both were traded. Last September, Mason McTavish went into training camp without a contract before the Ducks arrived at a six-year extension.
A week after ending the McTavish standoff, the Ducks announced an eight-year contract for Jackson LaCombe that doesn’t begin until the 2026-27 season. It was a max-term deal worth $72 million, the largest contract in Anaheim’s history in terms of total money. Verbeek could have gone down a familiar route with LaCombe and gone into the summer, or all the way through it. This deal was hammered out well ahead of any pressure point.
Maybe he was onto something. As the 25-year-old LaCombe is enjoying an eye-opening first-round playoff series against the Edmonton Oilers, the Ducks are witnessing the birth of a franchise defenseman they once envisioned in what is becoming a steal of a second-round pick in the 2019 draft.
“I mean, it’s insane,” said McTavish, thinking of LaCombe’s growth since his rookie season. “I think he’s probably our best player. He just does everything. Even in practice, trying to pass against him. He’s defending a two-on-one and it’s so hard to pass through every time. Just his skating. He’s so smart out in the O-zone. He skates single-man breakout. He literally does it all, so it’s been really fun to watch him step into this role.”
Connor McDavid might know now about the difficulty in getting a pass through LaCombe on an odd-man rush. The Oilers superstar is already having a difficult series but in Game 3, he finally gained some open space to rush up ice with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and only LaCombe back to defend. LaCombe went legs-first to the ice and, as he read McDavid’s wish to feed Nugent-Hopkins on the back post, swung his stick around to break up the pass.
It was one of the highlights of a special Game 3, which the Ducks won, 7-4, to take a 2-1 series lead over the Oilers into Game 4 on Sunday in Anaheim.
“He’s so fast and hard to defend so I tried to just slide and make a play,” LaCombe said Saturday. “And then obviously he kind of worked around me there and I just kind of swung it around and got pretty lucky, to be honest.
“You got to be careful in those plays. You never know if it could bounce off your stick and go in or something. Just happy to get the puck on that one.”
The tone in which LaCombe spoke was as modest as his words. But his game Friday — and the first three in the series — have been a loud statement.
McDavid got his first points in Game 3 with a power-play goal and an assist on a Nugent-Hopkins goal. But LaCombe has made things hard on him. LaCombe’s stellar defense pushed a rushing McDavid into the wall during the third period that sparked a change in possession. The Ducks cashed in at the other end, with LaCombe joining the play for a shot on goal and Jeffrey Viel ending it with a key insurance goal.
Right now, there isn’t a better player in the series. With his six points, LaCombe is the only defenseman on the playoff scoring leaderboard. After a stellar night where he played 26:49 and added an empty-net goal from across the ice, Ducks coach Joel Quenneville proclaimed, “Oh my god, was he good tonight. He was special tonight.”
The discussion about LaCombe online is a far cry from the moment he signed his big extension last October.
Two questions often followed: Who? How much?
It was a big bet Verbeek made. But it’s paying off as the Ducks make noise in their return to the playoffs after eight years.
“I think he’s kind of hidden a little bit,” said Jacob Trouba, who has been LaCombe’s regular defense partner. “I’ve said this before, but I didn’t really know much about him before I got traded here. I’ve watched him over the past year and a little bit and how he’s evolved and continues to grow. The contract is obviously well-deserved. And I think it’s kind of coming out a little more of who he is and how good of a player he is on more of the, I guess, national stage throughout the league. …
“He’s a guy that you want to build around for a long time and lucky to have him here.”
LaCombe chuckled at the memory of being an unknown to those who haven’t followed his trajectory from the University of Minnesota — where he played on a star-laden Golden Gophers team that had the Minnesota Wild’s Brock Faber on the same defense corps — to an up-and-down rookie campaign in 2023-24 to his breakout in 2024-25 with 14 goals and 43 points.
The true glow-up has come now. After increasing his point total to 58 in the regular season, LaCombe is having a star turn as a force at both ends for Anaheim.
“I feel like I’ve seen that the whole year when I’ve been here,” said Mikael Granlund, who has played with Ryan Suter, Roman Josi, Kris Letang and Miro Heiskanen over his 14-year career. “He’s such a rock back there. He can skate, he can make plays. He just looks so calm and confident. In my opinion, he’s already one of the best in the league. And I think he’s only going to get better.”
The accolades are coming to someone who doesn’t seek them. The path to becoming a top NHL defenseman isn’t always linear. LaCombe played forward through much of his youth hockey and didn’t focus on the blue line until he got to Shattuck-St. Mary’s School. Even in his draft year, he was considered a talented prospect with a high ceiling, but also raw and in need of development as a defender.
It is an attitude that he continues to carry as more people pay attention. He knows he can play at a high level and yet readily admits that he still has times when he feels good about his game and times when he doesn’t. The Ducks don’t see him as a finished product. Neither does he.
“You have to learn and grow,” LaCombe said. “You see other players around the league and what they can do. Even on your own team, too. There’s always details you can pick up and there are so many things in my game that I want to improve and work on. So, I don’t think there is ever a point where you’re at a finished spot, I guess.”
Quenneville coached Duncan Keith during his rise into a two-time Norris Trophy-winning defenseman and a leader on the Chicago Blackhawks who won three Stanley Cup titles. While the coach joked that both Keith and LaCombe wear No. 2, he draws other parallels between the two.
“I just know that they’re comparable,” he said. “They’re both very agile. They both like to skate with the puck. Duncs was a good defender and he had a little bit of a bite in his game. Offensively, I think maybe more upside with … I don’t say who’s better at this and that, but certainly he’ll have the upside that Duncan had at that stage of his career. And they’re both comparable exactly where they were in their games, almost the same time.”
Development for LaCombe wasn’t limited to the ice surface. In his first couple of seasons with the Ducks, he credits former coach Greg Cronin with turning him onto martial arts training — he worked with Brazilian jiu jitsu instructor Jeremy Clark — to become more comfortable with the combative side of the game. LaCombe also continues to talk with a mental coach, whom he prefers not to identify but calls a friend.
“I think there’s a mental side of the game too that you want to enhance and try and be at your best all the time,” LaCombe said. “So, for me, that’s something I wanted to try and figure out and (am) still figuring out even today. That was huge for me to … be able to kind of calm down off the ice and relax. And when it’s time to play, play.”
Now the hockey world is seeing LaCombe do it all from the back end. Those watching the series that didn’t know his game became witnesses — and perhaps admirers — when he absorbed hits from Zach Hyman in Game 1 and then delivered some reverse payback in the third period against one of the league’s foremost and effective forecheckers.
“You look at a lot of the best defensemen in the league now or over the course of my career, they’re all kind of the cool, calm, collected,” said Trouba, who compared LaCombe’s game to that of former Winnipeg Jets teammate Josh Morrissey. “Don’t really get rattled. Obviously, guys (and) teams are going to target him and try to get him off his game. I think he also has the ability to throw a hit like he did on Hyman there early.
“He’s got that poise and the character, the charisma, everything that you want and that type of player who can play the big minutes and not really get thrown off his game, but also play the physical game. I wasn’t surprised by the hit early. I think he’s shown he can play a physical game and he’s a good player. He’s the guy you want to build around for a long time here.”
