Canucks offseason centre trade target: Trevor Zegras

As the Vancouver Canucks and their fans look around the league with envy at various other forward corps, they’ve got to keep something in mind – Zegras is always greener on the other side.

Sorry. But we knew this particular offseason centre trade target might prove controversial, so we wanted to lighten the mood up front with a terrible pun.

Trevor Zegras of the Anaheim Ducks is a mercurial player, both in terms of the consistency of his play and in the opinions of others regarding that play. He’s gone from EA Sports cover boy to someone without a clear-cut future with the club that drafted him, and in short order.

All that being said, he remains one of the most talented forwards available on the NHL trade market this summer.

In fact, Zegras may have just become a little more available. The Ducks acquired Chris Kreider from the New York Rangers on Thursday, loading up their burgeoning forward roster a little further. Kreider ostensibly joins an Anaheim group that already includes the youth of Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish, Cutter Gauthier and the more veteran presence of Troy Terry, Ryan Strome, Frank Vatrano, and Alex Killorn.

With prospects like Bennett Sennecke and Sam Colangelo on the way, too, it’s all starting to look a little overstuffed.

And then there’s Zegras. He’s gone from seasons of 61 and 65 points in his first two full NHL campaigns to seasons of just 15 (in 31 games) and 32 points (in 57 games) with no gap in between. It might seem like Zegras has been around for longer, but he’s about to enter his sixth NHL season, and nobody really knows what to make of him yet.

It’s the kind of situation where we typically use the phrase ‘change of scenery.’ Anaheim is stocked up well enough that Zegras is in danger of losing further opportunity, which only reduces his value further and decreases the odds of him turning it around. Combine that truth with a general perception that Zegras’ attitude and commitment levels have got in the way of his progress, and you end up with a player that the Ducks could be looking to cash in on, now, before it’s potentially too late to garner a return based on Zegras’ one-time potential.

But are the Canucks the right buyer for this distressed asset?

The Player

The most important thing to keep in mind with Zegras is that he’s just 24 years old and will remain so for the majority of the 2025/26 season.

Zegras was drafted out of the USHL at 9^th overall in 2019 and spent a single season with Boston University in 2019/20 before moving on to the pros.

He split the 2020/21 season between Anaheim and San Diego of the AHL. With the Gulls, he managed 21 points in 17 games, an impressive stat line for a teenage rookie pro. He managed 24 games in Anaheim that year as well, scoring 13 points in 24 games while retaining his Calder eligibility for the following season.

The 2021/22 season was Zegras’s first full season with the Ducks, and he came out gangbusters. An end result of 23 goals and 61 points in 75 games definitely made Zegras stand out. He was nominated for the Calder Trophy, but lost out to Moritz Seider of Detroit. But that offseason, Zegras received a different honour in the form of the NHL 23 cover, shared with the newest PWHL Vancouver star, Sarah Nurse.

Zegras’ sophomore year might not have been a major step forward, but it at least wasn’t a step back. He maintained his health and offensive output, notching another 23 goals and 65 points, this time in 81 games.

Then came the turn.

Zegras’ 2022/23 season ended with a lower-body injury that no doubt hampered his offseason plans, but not the Ducks’ plans to sign him to a three-year, $5.75 million AAV bridge deal. Unfortunately for both sides, it wasn’t too long into the 2023/24 season that Zegras suffered another LBI that kept him out of the lineup a little longer than a month – his first major injury. Then, he was only back on the ice for a few weeks before a broken ankle took him out again, this time for longer than two months.

In the end, Zegras would play just 31 games this year, with six goals and 15 points.

His most recent 2024/25 could be considered a rebound of sorts, but not a complete rebound. Once again, a lower-body injury, this time to his knee, kept Zegras out for almost two months. He managed 57 games, but just 12 goals and 32 points – both a far cry from his rookie and sophomore numbers, and definitely not the kind of statline to get EA Sports’ attention.

And that’s where we find ourselves in the present moment.

Zegras is about to begin the final year of that $5.75 million extension. He’s still young enough to be an RFA when it expires next summer. But it’s looking less and less like he’ll still be a Duck when that time comes around.

Will he be a Canuck instead?

Despite the inconsistency at play, there’s not much mystery about what type of player Zegras is. We refer to trade targets as ‘skilled’ or ‘talented’ fairly frequently, but when we use those terms in reference to Zegras, we really mean them. This is a truly high-skill individual, in the same lane that Alex Kovalev used to occupy. If NHL hockey didn’t involve defence, it’s been said that Zegras could be one of the NHL’s greatest. It’s getting consistent results against NHL defences, which has proven tricky.

Zegras’ size is fine enough at 6’0”, though he could still stand to add some muscle. His skating is good, if not great. But Zegras’ calling card will always be that almost unparalleled creativity with the puck, which could and has translated into Zegras being a truly unique playmaker.

He’s got hands, is what we’re saying, and those hands don’t go away just because of a couple of LBIs and some down years. The skill remains – but then, so do all those downsides to Zegras, like his play away from the puck and whispers of his too-casual approach to the game.

The Fit

Usually in these articles, we talk about the cost before we talk about the fit, but we’ve switched it up this time for one simple reason: there’s a debate to be had about whether or not Zegras is worth any cost to the Canucks. No doubt some of you reading this already have him in the ‘do not acquire’ column due to his established reputation.

On the one hand, Zegras has spent as much time on the wing in the last couple of seasons as he has at centre, despite that being his natural position. If the Canucks were to trade for him, they’d almost certainly be doing so with the attention of playing him at 2C, so they’d first have to be confident about him returning to that position. For our money, we’ll note that his best NHL years came as a centre, and hope that he can get back to that.

For his part, Zegras has indicated that he does not enjoy playing on the wing, and would prefer a move back to centre – one more reason he’s probably fine being traded away from Anaheim and their abundance of pivots.

Zegras doesn’t profile as a Rick Tocchet sort of player, which raises an obvious question about how well he’d get on with Adam Foote. But at the same time, if a change of scenery trade also serves as a bit of a wake-up call and inspires Zegras to do some learning, this is a coaching staff that can definitely assist him on the defensive side of his play.

The 24-year-old would certainly make for an injection of outright scoring skill, something the Canucks are relatively short on, especially with Brock Boeser still set to depart. We worry that Zegras being more of a playmaker isn’t necessarily a fit for the wingers the Canucks have on hand, who also tend to make plays more than they directly score. But we do like the potential puck-handling combo of Zegras and Conor Garland, and we could imagine him making for a great rookie linemate for a sniper like Jonathan Lekkerimäki.

Zegras could be just what the Canucks’ anemic power play ordered, too.

The salary is definitely something the Canucks can accommodate, and unless Zegras turns it around in a major way, they don’t have to worry too much about a pay raise. If that happens, it’s a good problem.

But that’s the central issue all the same. For Zegras to be any sort of ‘fit’ in Vancouver, and especially for him to constitute any sort of upgrade on the centre depth behind Elias Pettersson, Filip Chytil, Aatu Räty, and Teddy Blueger, Zegras is going to need to bounce back – if not all the way to his rookie greatness, then at least closer to that standard than his current rate of play.

Certain past versions of Zegras would be a great fit for the Canucks. The question is which Zegras shows up.

The Cost

Here we reach an interesting little mini-debate. Is Zegras currently worth the Canucks’ first round pick, slated at 15^th overall?

The gut reaction is definitely ‘no.’ Zegras was once drafted at 9OA himself, but these last two seasons had to have depreciated his value considerably. There’s a real risk in trading an asset as good as a mid-round first for a player with this many question marks.

If there’s a real concerted belief in Zegras, especially his ability to turn it around, then it could definitely be argued that the 15OA is a fair straight-up return. But making that determination would require some due diligence, and it’s hard to imagine how the Canucks could perform that due diligence while Zegras belongs to another club.

Suffice it to say, that the first rounder is the highest price the Canucks could justify paying for Zegras, and that they’d certainly hope to land him for less.

Maybe that lesser price is a different first round pick if the Canucks can manage to acquire one for, say, Thatcher Demko or Conor Garland. Maybe it’s next year’s first with some heavy protective clauses attached.

Or maybe, just maybe, the desire for the Ducks to part with Zegras is stronger than we realize, and they’d be willing to accept a lesser package. If the Canucks could land him for something like their second-round pick and a non-top-shelf prospect, then we imagine that most would be all for it. That’s a price tag that fits the risk attached to Zegras.

Anything more than that, and we’re not sure Zegras is going to be worth it – nor do we even know how to guess, really, until we’ve seen him play a little more hockey.