After what felt like an eternity of trade rumors and questionable faith negotiations between organization and player, Trevor Zegras has finally been traded out of Anaheim. He will be joining his best friend, Jamie Drysdale, as a member of the Philadelphia Flyers. The Ducks received Ryan Poehling, a 2^nd round pick (2025), and a 4^th round pick (2026) in return for the now-former face of the franchise. Beneath the controversial star’s name recognition, and preexisting narratives involving young players traded between these two franchises in the last several years, let’s take a look at how the pieces stack up, and how their historic value could alter their new teams’ futures.

               Starting with Zegras, and how the timing of this aligned for the Flyers, it was obvious that after the Chris Kreider trade, Anaheim had too more left-handed top-six forwards than they had roster spots, and to the surprise of absolutely no one, Zegras was Verbeek’s odd man out. On the scoring side of the world, Zegras’ floor is quite high. In his two most recent and injury plagued campaigns on unimpressive Anaheim rosters he still maintained a P/60 of 1.9 in 5v5 situations, which was only a slight departure from the 2.0 that propelled him to his career high of 65 points in the 2022-2023 season. At 5v5, Zegras tracks as a competent 2^nd line scoring winger or center, and the upside of his scoring output has been dependent on the efficiency of an Anaheim powerplay whose best contributors over the past three seasons have been Troy Terry, Mason McTavish, and Frank Vatrano. It is not a stretch to believe that playing with the likes of Matvei Michkov and Travis Konecny on special teams (and 5v5) should easily elevate Zegras’ output. Aside from the injuries, the main kerfuffle with Zegras’ career is how much his defensive performance has impacted on his overall performance on a nightly and yearly basis. In 2021-2022, Zegras posted his career high in GAR with a 5.8, but in subsequent years posted marks of 0.6, 0.3, and -3.7. The 0.6 in 2022-2023 has been the alarming metric of the entire narrative around Zegras’ play, as an 8.7 Off GAR was rendered almost worthless to his nightly impact due to a -7.9 Def GAR. The first Cronin year did see Zegras’ Def GAR reach a 0.6 (into the positive!), but the second year saw it regress back to a -4.4. Overall, the Flyers are betting on Zegras’ ceiling and their ability to both put him in a position and coach him to be successful.

               I am a pessimist, and frankly at this point the draft capital Anaheim received is effectively worthless in the context of using the picks, so if the Ducks use both instead of trading them, there was virtually zero value in acquiring them other than for Pat Verbeek to pretend that he got good value in this trade. Ryan Poehling is an incredibly precise acquisition for the Ducks, if based only on his past three seasons playing hockey in the state of Pennsylvania. In his last season in Pittsburgh and his first season in Philadelphia (2022-2023 and 2023-2024) Poehling posted 5v5 P/60 stat lines of 1.2 and 1.3 while playing a bottom-six capacity. In 2024-2025, Poehling surprised at least one person (me) by posting a career high 5v5 P/60 of 1.9 while playing a shade under 14 minutes per game, showcasing that he is capable of some decent scoring contribution in a checking line role. Where Poehling becomes an interesting addition is his GAR stats. During the Pennsylvania years, he has posted 5.4, 1.0, and 6.3 respectively. Poehling has been an above zero value defender and scorer for two of those three seasons, while also being a net positive with his penalties drawn to taken ratio in that same timespan. Simply put, Poehling is a solid bottom six player who is a consistent low-net positive for his team in the role.

               In conclusion, both GMs got something that they were seeking in this trade. Based on name value, and the objective truth to Zegras’ offensive ceiling, the Flyers have a high probability of coming out on the other side of this trade as big winners, and frankly, if Zegras doesn’t pan out as they hope, they didn’t sacrifice anything substantial to bring him onboard. Unless Zegras has an incredible flame out in Philadelphia this season, Pat Verbeek will be haunted by this deal long after his death, as the timing and assets received in the deal don’t live up to what they could have been. A singular season under Joel Quenneville before becoming an arbitration eligible RFA would have yielded Anaheim a much larger return for Zegras than what they received. However, luckily for you and I, our careers aren’t tied to this trade and we can just sit back and wonder why while the Samueli family scrutinizes Verbeek’s plan to return the Ducks to postseason.