Declaring your team's most important player is not a simple thing. It's not always the most valuable guy or the highest points producer. It is the player who makes your team go; the one you can't afford to lose, even if all he contributes can't be measured by fancy stats.

Most Important Player: Ryan Getzlaf, Forward

Where Getzlaf goes, the Anaheim Ducks follow.

And if you were plotting a graph showing the ascension of the Ducks over the past three seasons, then one might presume that the next step is at least a berth in the Western Conference finals after three straight years of taking incremental steps deeper in the playoffs.

Getzlaf may not have the profile of other NHL captains like Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin or Jonathan Toews, but if you asked 100 hockey people to list the top five centers in the game, close to 100 would have Getzlaf on that list, maybe even the top three.

Getzlaf led the Ducks to their third straight Pacific Division crown last season with 70 points. Of his 25 goals, six were game winners and 13 either tied a game or gave the Ducks a lead. And Getzlaf has quietly evolved into a stellar two-way forward, finishing second among all forwards with 95 blocked shots and leading all Ducks forwards with 22:25 in average ice time per night in the playoffs.

Speaking of the playoffs, Getzlaf once again proved he is a postseason force, collecting 20 points in 16 games to best his own franchise record for postseason production as the Ducks bowed out in Game 7 of the Western Conference finals to the eventual Stanley Cup winners from Chicago.

In the past two playoff years, Getzlaf has picked up 35 points in 28 playoff games. Now, if we’re going to quibble, we’ll point out that in three straight years, the Ducks have been eliminated from the playoffs in a Game 7 and all of those games have been on home ice. In those three games, Getzlaf has three assists. Did we mention quibbling?

Still, when you are among the elite in the game, these are the moments that dog you if you aren’t on the winning side of the ledger when it matters most.

Getzlaf was a young man when the Ducks won their first and only Stanley Cup in 2007. He and linemate Corey Perry both carry the burden of returning a strong Ducks team to the pinnacle -- sooner rather than later. Since that Cup win, both Getzlaf and Perry have acquired two Olympic gold medals with Canada in 2010 and 2014, and the pressure is mounting on the current edition of the Ducks to take the final steps to return the Cup to Anaheim. At age 30, Getzlaf (runner-up for the Hart Trophy as league MVP in 2014) is coming into his prime not just as a player but as the Ducks’ captain -- a role he assumed in the fall of 2010 after Hall of Famer Scott Niedermayer retired.

As we noted, when Getzlaf goes, so go the Ducks; this is a theme we feel will likely be revisited often next May and June.