By Corey Pronman, Shayna Goldman and Eric Duhatschek
Anaheim Ducks get the following Forward cutter Gauthier
The Philadelphia Flyers will find: Defenseman Jamie Drysdale, 2025 second round pick
Corey Pronman: A major subtext to this deal is that Gauthier had indicated months earlier that he didn’t want to sign flyers. It was the peak where it became clear that there could be a trade after the world juniors could not meet him.
Gauthier is a legitimate top prospect who could be a top line prospect. He’s a 6-foot-3 center who can skate, is very versatile and has a high-end shot. Gauthier has been debated for years as an NHL center or wing due to minor concerns about his hockey sense. He was the United States’ top line center at the recent World Juniors and one of the best players in the tournament overall. He could play on the wing alongside someone like Leo Karlsson or Mason McTavish in Anaheim. This gives Anaheim a potentially lethal young team to build around as they try to get out of a slump.
Anaheim had a bit of a problem with their young defensemen. Pavel Mintyukov looked great as a teenager in the NHL. He was going to battle with Jamie Drysdale for power play time for a long time. Like the upcoming Olen Zellweger and Tristan Luno. Drysdale is the better of the two, but they’re all legitimate offensive-minded prospects and there’s only so much power-play time to go around. Anaheim has come from a position of strength in this regard. They need to know what their future blue line looks like, and in the defense-heavy 2024 NHL draft, the current team doesn’t look like a competitive nucleus, so they can go with a defenseman with their first pick. Ideally, add a large two-way resistor.
Gauthier is a great player, but Drysdale isn’t that much less promising (especially if Gauthier is a long-time winger and coincidentally announced in their press conference that Anaheim is a left winger), he’s just hurt a lot. 18 NHL games played since the 2022 season. At the top of his game, he looks like a top-pairing defenseman envisioned in the NHL, despite not being that big, coupled with solid puck movement. When he’s been healthy the past few weeks, he’s looked like a minutes-eating defenseman. It’s easy to forget how good he looked just a few years ago as a youngster in the Ducks’ organization.
The Ducks currently have the better player of the two, but given the circumstances, Drysdale is still a great long-term piece for the Flyers, who are without a top young defenseman. He ranks ahead of defensive end Cam York, for example, on the team. He just needs to be healthy
Duck Level: a –
Level of flyers: for-
Shaina Goldman: It’s easy to chalk this up as a loss to the Flyers — after all, they’re losing the best player in the deal. And the latest World Junior title doesn’t help now, because how great Gauthier is is fresh in everyone’s mind. Management 2022 may have been intended to be the cornerstone of the No. 5 rebuild. But if the player doesn’t want to sign there, that may not be in the cards. The second thing to note, and it’s pretty obvious if it’s shaping up, is that Philadelphia loses a ton of leverage. So for them it is less than the same from the beginning to the end.
The good side is that the management does not go without anything here. Sure, they’re the losers of the trade, but it could have been worse – they could have lost him for nothing when the draft was over, or they could have been frustrated and that’s not what happened here. A second-round pick is valuable to a rebuilding team like Drysdale.
Drysdale hasn’t really developed at the NHL level yet, and injuries have a lot to do with it. But there’s untapped potential for the 21-year-old — someone who could develop into a top-four-caliber defenseman. If he can stay healthy, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him round out the defensive elements of his game that need work under John Tortorella and Brad Shaw. And in the meantime, he can bring some strength that the Flyers need right now. Philadelphia’s power play is a disaster this season, so it wouldn’t hurt to bring in someone who can jump over the top as a quarterback and maybe add some spark.
Even with some upside to the flyers here, the Ducks are the winners of this trade. There was some question as to whether it could be Trevor Zegras. of A guy in Anaheim, that will put more emphasis on the forward team around him. Along with Zegras, Troy Terry and Mason McTavish, this team has now added Leo Karlsson and Gauthier to the fold in the past year. That’s still a lot of young talent up front, which should help the Ducks get back to impact mode soon and stay there for a long time.
Given what’s in their pipeline on the back end — Pavel Mintyukov, Olen Zellweger and Tristan Luno, who will play at the NHL level this season — management has the ability to move Drysdale. Pat Verbeek has taken advantage of their many talent positions to further strengthen the team going forward. So the defense may be less encouraging now without him in Anaheim in the near future, with their eyes on the big picture that this trade will help support. It’s a very unpleasant move, but it’s a manager in Verbeek’s position. must be. To be swayed. It rebuilds a reliance on difference-making talent, and this multi-talented player can make that happen.
Duck Level: A
Level of flyers: b
Eric Duhacek: So, this is a serious blockbuster that you don’t see very often in the NHL. Two young players with potential to become stars in the league have been traded. But there were whispers in the GM community last week that the Flyers might struggle to sign Gauthier, even though they would have had his rights for a long time before losing him as a free agent. But GM Daniel Breyer isn’t brave, and it’s a brave move to get in front of a potential issue before it starts.
From Anaheim’s perspective, the deal makes a lot of sense. Organizationally, the organization was bullish in defensive prospects. Last year, the Ducks had a top defenseman in each of Canada’s major junior leagues – Olen Zellweger in the WHL, Tristan Luneau in Quebec and Pavel Mintyukov in Ontario. Of the three, only Mintyukov has seen regular action in the NHL this season, but the Ducks have trusted him to play the top power play unit until he recovers from a core hamstring injury suffered in the second game of the season. He missed a total of 29 games. Drysdale, it should be noted, also missed most of last season, recovering from shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum, which limited him to only eight games. That means he’s seen limited action at the NHL level over the past two years or so after putting up 32 points in 81 games as the NHL’s second-leading scorer in 2021-22 — good results for a player who’s still in his prime since then.
So, his upside is high – he could be a No. 1 defenseman in the making, dynamic talent from the blue line, great hockey sense, very good at knowing when to pinch and when to rebound. In addition to those three, the Ducks have on hand Jackson Lacombe, who joined the organization last year after playing for the University of Minnesota and played most of his time in the NHL until he was sent down to the minors last week.
The fifth player selected in the 2022 draft meant they had the blue-line depth to make the play for Gauthier, the same way the Ducks got Mintukov at No. 10. Anaheim forwards include Trevor Zegras, Mason McTavish and Leo Karlsson, the second overall pick last June, who is sidelined with an injury. To go along with the top four defensive prospects is an even more formidable core of young forwards.
As for the Flyers, they’ve been using Igor Zamula to play their top power play of late, and he should quickly give way to Drysdale. On paper, it looks like a win for both organizations. Ducks GM Pat Verbeek said it best: No player of Gauthier’s pedigree is a deal you have to make, via trade, often. Also worth noting is that manager Bob Murray, who drafted Drysdale for the Ducks, is now advising the flyer and providing valuable input.
Duck Level: A
Level of flyers: B+
(Crop Gauthier photo: Adam Ehse/TT/AFP)