Brendan Mikkelson, Logan MacMillan are Ducks' final roster cuts

Brendan Mikkelson, Logan MacMillan are Ducks’ final roster cuts

Sports Columnist

Sept. 30, 2009 10:56 AM PT

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The Ducks made their last two cuts in advance of today’s noon PDT deadline to file rosters with the NHL, and neither was a big surprise.

Defenseman Brendan Mikkelson was assigned to Toronto of the American Hockey League, and 2007 first-round pick Logan MacMillan was assigned to Bakersfield of the ECHL. Because the Ducks don’t have a working agreement with a minor-league team this season they’ve had to scatter players to several places, though they’ll probably have at least half a dozen in San Antonio, the primary affiliate of the Phoenix Coyotes. Mikkelson, 22, played 34 games with the Ducks last season and had two assists. He’s big, at 6-foot-2, 202 pounds, but he isn’t as strong as he could be and doesn’t win battles for the puck. Coach Randy Carlyle said Tuesday that the team was trying to educate MacMillan, 20, about ‘a couple of training issues,’ which is cryptic -- but Carlyle often is.

The two cuts leave the Ducks with 14 forwards, seven defensemen and two goaltenders.

More later at www.latimes.com/sports.

-- Helene Elliott

Sports Now

Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.