Grading the Trevor Zegras trade: Flyers gamble on talent as Ducks pull the plug

Anthony Trudeau
Anthony Trudeau(atrud00)
Jun 23, 2025, 14:44 EDT
Grading the Trevor Zegras trade: Flyers gamble on talent as Ducks pull the plug
Credit: Ryan Sun-Imagn Images

The end of June might coincide with the last competitive NHL games in over three months, but that doesn’t mean we writers get to take a vacation. Free agency looms, draft cheat sheets abound, and trade rumors swirl. 

For Trevor Zegras, those trade rumors are finally over, but not because of a renewed commitment from the Anaheim Ducks. Zegras can finally stop worrying because he really has been traded this time. 

Philadelphia Flyers GM Daniel Briere has been teasing reinforcements for some time, especially down the middle. Still, with dead money on the books and a strong 2026 free agency class on the horizon, it seemed they would only improve around the margins this offseason.

Zegras is not the player his early promise suggested, but there’s nothing marginal about adding a brand name to a top six starving for talent to pair with Russian phenom Matvei Michkov. 

What kind of value did they get for him, though, and how did the Ducks make out in all of this? Find out in one of the final installments of Daily Faceoff’s Trade Grades before the NHL calendar flips to 2025-26.

Philadelphia Flyers

Receive:

F Trevor Zegras, $5.75 million cap hit through 2026

It’s hard to gripe with this deal from the Flyers’ perspective. Yes, Zegras is a flawed player who has had his ups and downs, but he checks many of the boxes they came into this offseason looking to fix. 

He’s still 24 with the pedigree of a No. 9 overall pick and Calder Trophy runner-up. He can play center and did for his most productive two NHL seasons when he recorded 60+ points in consecutive campaigns from 2021-23. Perhaps most importantly, he’s willing to take chances on offense, sometimes to a fault.

The Flyers’ work rate made them metric darlings under deposed coach John Tortorella, but they lacked the talent to cash in on the opportunities they created on the forecheck; they scored 24 fewer 5-on-5 goals than expected during Torts’ tenure. The power play was even worse, cashing in at a league-worst 14.1% clip over those three seasons.

Zegras averages 21 goals and 57 points per 82 games despite falling out of favor over two injury-hit final seasons in Anaheim. He immediately raises the ceiling of a group that boasts two legitimate difference makers (Michkov and Team Canada’s Travis Konecny), a few talented but inconsistent triggermen (Owen Tippett and Tyson Foerster), and a whole lot of worker bees (Noah Cates, Garnet Hathaway, etc.).

Zegras still needs to improve on the backcheck and in the faceoff dot (40.4 career FO %) to stick at center long-term, but he’s a worthwhile gamble for Briere, who lost nothing of consequence in this trade. It also implies faith that new coach Rick Tocchet will be more willing to meet players where they’re at than Tortorella ever was.

Old USA Hockey National Team Development Program teammates Cam York and Jamie Drysdale should soften Zegras’s landing in Philly, where he’ll audition for a new contract as a pending 2026 RFA.

Grade: A

Anaheim Ducks

Receive

F Ryan Poehling, $1.9 million cap hit through 2026
2025 second-round pick (45th overall)
2026 fourth-round pick

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.

Grade: C-

_____

Tune in for The Sheet Draft Special, streaming live on the Daily Faceoff YouTube channel on Friday, June 27th at 7 PM EST. Hosted by Jeff Marek, this live special will cover all the action from the 2025 Draft, including expert analysis of top prospects, team-by-team breakdowns, and real-time reactions to every pick. Whether you’re tracking your team’s future stars or just love the drama of draft night, this is your go-to destination for all things Draft.

_____

Recently by Anthony Trudeau

MORE FACEOFF.IN YOUR INBOX.
CLICK TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DAILY NEWSLETTER
Keep scrolling for more content!