NHL Notebook: Ducks trade Trevor Zegras to Flyers

Selected by the Ducks with the ninth overall pick in the 2019 draft, Zegras finished second in Calder Trophy voting as the league’s top rookie in 2021-22. Over his first two full seasons in the NHL, the skilled forward recorded 46 goals and 126 points in 156 games.

Zegras sat out of Anaheim’s training camp ahead of the 2022-23 season as a restricted free agent without a contract and signed a three-year deal worth $5.75 million annually an early October. He struggled through an injury-riddled season, scoring only six goals and 15 points over 31 games. The 2024-25 season wasn’t much better, as the 24-year-old put up 32 points in 57 games.

This is the second time in as many years that the Ducks opted to move on from a top draft pick in a deal with the Flyers. Last January, Anaheim dealt defenceman Jamie Drysdale, who they selected sixth overall in 2020, to Philadelphia along with a second-round pick for Cutter Gauthier.

Daily Faceoff graded this trade an A for the Flyers and a C- for the Ducks…

Anaheim quit on Zegras. That’s neither an indictment nor a hot take, just a fact. Not yet a veteran like Chris Kreider or Alex Killorn but no longer considered a building block like Leo Carlsson or Cutter Gauthier, Zegras, the sixth-highest cap hit on the team, was surplus to requirements ahead of coach Joel Quenneville’s takeover.

General manager Pat Verbeek cut bait and got a roster player in Ryan Poehling and a couple of mid-round, dart-throw draft picks for his troubles. The Ducks were never getting a first-round pick for a player they’d flirted with trading for the better part of a year, and Poehling should have some utility in their bottom six.

The 2017 first-rounder cemented himself as an NHLer in Philadelphia and fits well with Anaheim’s priority on size and speed. Poehling is coming off the most productive season of his career (31 P in 68 GP) and was the third-most deployed forward on the Flyers’ PK, an area where the Ducks badly needs help.

It’s not a bad package for a distressed asset, but Anaheim can’t get off scot-free for, er, distressing the asset. Verbeek turned a young roster over to a real taskmaster in Greg Cronin two summers ago, and Zegras, Michigan goals and all, was often at the center of Cronin’s attempts to change the club’s culture. Their strained relationship and Zegras’s injury woes seemed to strip away the motor-mouthed forward’s characteristic audaciousness.

Fans of the Ducks and other teams that wanted Zegras for themselves are up in arms on Twitter over this trade, but their surprise is either feigned or naive. If you want to get a fair price for a muscle car, you don’t put it on blocks. The Zegras experiment will go down as a painful miss if he comes good in a different shade of orange.

Continue Reading…

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