Which team should target Mason McTavish this summer?

Everything seems to be looking up for the Anaheim Ducks, who just made the postseason for the first time since 2018 and won their first playoff series since 2017. While Anaheim’s promising future is led by a group of early-twenties, star-level players such as center Leo Carlsson and defenseman Jackson LaCombe, it seems not all of their young pieces are long-term fixtures.

According to David Pagnotta, center Mason McTavish is someone the Ducks could be willing to move this summer. McTavish, 23, is coming off a season of 17 goals and 24 assists for 41 points in 75 games. He also contributed a goals and five assists for six points in 10 postseason games. The 2021 third overall pick could be an intriguing trade target as a skilled center whose best days could be ahead of him.

On Friday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Steve Peters discussed which team should be most interested in acquiring McTavish.

Tyler Yaremchuk: If the Ducks are willing to make a move, who is one team that should target Mason McTavish?

Steve Peters: The Philadelphia Flyers, for two reasons. One, this Flyers team that went farther in playoffs than anybody expected has had trouble up the middle of the ice, there’s no question. With Mason McTavish, you’ve still got a young player that can provide some secondary offense for a team that really needs it. Most importantly, I think it would be a little pay back for the Cutter Gauthier situation and how poorly that went between Anaheim and Philadelphia, so let’s take one of their young guys and bring him back this way. I think Philadelphia needs to improve up the middle of the ice and I think that this is an option for them to do that.

Tyler Yaremchuk: 23 years old. Had a 20-goal season in 2024-25. Scored at well north of a 20-goal pace the year before that as well. Obviously this season was a step back, he was healthy scratched in the playoffs, he was healthy scratched in the regular season. He’s a bit of a distressed asset, but I still think that age is going to be what’s really tempting to a lot of teams. We say Philly do the Trevor Zegras thing with the Anaheim Ducks and it worked out swimmingly for them.

There’s a couple of teams that I think are really interesting fits. I wonder, and I know we kind of talked about this yesterday, but I wonder about the St. Louis Blues, because they have a piece that I think Anaheim would really want in Colton Parayko, and if you’re the Blues and you’re going through this little hard reset, you don’t want to rip it down to the studs as you trade away the (Jordan) Kyrous and the (Robert) Thomas’ and the Paraykos. You don’t want to totally go down to the studs and have nobody for the (Dylan) Holloways and the (Jake) Neighbours’ and the (Jimmy) Snuggeruds and (Dalibor) Dvorskys to play with. If you’re moving off a guy like Parayko, get someone like Mason McTavish who still has some upside, can maybe score you 25 goals, signed at $7 million, that’s a number you can absolutely afford. I’m curious about St. Louis in all this.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Friday’s episode here…