IRVINE — On Thursday, the first on-ice day of Ducks training camp, the team welcomed its 60-year-old, first-time head coach as a guiding beacon, but three of their brightest young stars were nowhere in sight.

While center Mason MacTavish was simply dealing with a muscle spasm that might not keep him out longer than a day, per General Manager Pat Verbeek, both forward Trevor Zegras and defenseman Jamie Drysdale remained without contracts for the upcoming season. Verbeek abstained from comment on negotiations with Zegras and Drysdale, as is team policy.

That response came after a report from Pierre LeBrun that Zegras and the Ducks were working on a three-year extension but that they remained light-years apart on its value. Drysdale is coming off a season lost almost entirely to a shoulder injury, but recently saw fellow 2020 lottery pick defenseman Jake Sanderson re-sign with the Ottawa Senators for $64.4 million over eight years. There was no clear indication of when Drysdale or Zegras might rejoin their teammates on the playing surface.

“It’s difficult because the time on ice and the reps is very important,” Verbeek said. “You get used to banging one another again, you get used to that infighting, stuff you can train for all during the summer but it’s not the same until you get on the ice. We have new coaches, new systems so there’s a lot from that aspect to absorb as a player.”

Absences limited the fluidity of some drills among the three groups of Ducks, but firmly established roster players, tryout invitees and everyone in between had an opportunity to make a first impression on new Coach Greg Cronin, who enters his first season as an NHL bench boss after he most recently stewarded the Colorado Avalanche’s top minor-league club.

Cronin, whose powerfully thick New England accent was abated only by the hoarseness caused by three practice sessions, was undeterred by any names that went unanswered at roll call.

“I don’t even spend a second on that. They’re obviously a big part of our organization but they’re not here. We’ve got to focus on the people that are here, it’s out of my control,” Cronin said. “I thought the guys that were here were totally dialed in.”

One cornerstone player the Ducks already managed to lock down long-term this summer was winger Troy Terry, whose seven-year, $49 million pact made him a Duck for the foreseeable future. Terry and the rest of the Ducks understood that protracted negotiations can be a part of the business and instead focused on the optimism of new beginnings, to the season as well as to Cronin’s tenure.

Terry described Cronin as “exactly what we needed” and echoed Verbeek’s sentiments about Cronin’s attentiveness, ebullience and perspicacity.

Cronin’s ties to the Ducks are many, though that could be said of seemingly every NHL organization given the length and varied nature of Cronin’s career. He coached former Ducks Hall of Famer Paul Kariya at the University of Maine and worked under the only coach to ever guide the Ducks to a Stanley Cup title, Randy Carlyle, with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He even briefly coached his predecessor, Dallas Eakins, with the New York Islanders. In a second stint as an assistant with the Isles, he had Ducks forward Ryan Strome on the roster.

“He’s got a lot of wisdom. He comes from a pretty interesting background and he’s very open with sharing his life and his experiences, that’s his way to connect with us and try to teach us,” Strome said.

Cronin held court, despite his voice running on fumes from the first word, for nearly 20 minutes on Thursday. He spoke in detail about a defensive philosophy that draws heavily from that of not only Colorado but also the Carolina Hurricanes, two of the most innovative and successful franchises of the present era. For all his enthusiasm and confidence, there have been impasses as well, like when he returned to the minor-pro level after being dismissed by Lou Lamoriello in New York, who suggested going back to the American Hockey League.

“Have you ever seen ‘A Christmas Story,’ the movie, with Ralphie and the BB gun? I was like Ralphie on the way down the slide, asking him to help me get to the next level and he booted me down the slide,” Cronin said. “He told me to go back to the American League after I was already there like 10 years ago.”

BOOMERANGS, RUGBY BALLS AND … PUCKS?

This week, the NHL will host its first-ever games in Australia, two exhibitions between the Kings and Arizona Coyotes, and Cronin thought back to his own time there more than 30 years ago when he set off on an adventure of his own, working construction and exploring the faraway lands of Australia and New Zealand.

While he didn’t have the opportunity to get to know Melbourne, the site of the games, living mostly in Sydney, Cronin said he had revisited the period in his life after reading about the upcoming matches.

“I just kind of reflected on that, when I was down there, there was an ice sheet in a shopping mall that was north of Sydney, and I would go there on lunch breaks sometimes and watch them play pickup hockey,” Cronin said. “It was a long time ago, but it was a rough-and-tumble country so it’s probably a pretty good match in terms of its sports selection.”

CARLSSON CENTERS TOP LINE

With Zegras and MacTavish both sidelined, No. 2 overall draft pick Leo Carlsson found himself flanked by Terry and two-time Stanley Cup winner Alex Killorn, whom the Ducks lured away from the Tampa Bay Lightning in free agency this summer.

“I was really impressed with him and the way he played. Being a center at 18 and playing in the NHL is very difficult but I think he’s more than capable of doing so,” Killorn said.

Cronin said he felt Carlsson might have shown some fatigue at rookie camp earlier in the summer after a whirlwind series of tournaments, workouts and events, and that he was enthused by Carlsson’s more recent showings, particularly Thursday’s.

“Some young guys come in and they kind of get nervous, and they get fearful in an environment with these NHL players,” Cronin said. “Other guys will come in and, like I had Mat Barzal in New York, and he felt like he belonged as an 18-year-old and he got better with the better players, and I think, just in a small snapshot, Leo looked better today than I’ve seen him in the other views I’ve had.”

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