The Ducks are past the quantity need, if a young guy is traded it will be with a plus for an upgrade or player that better fits Verbeek's vision (but similar caliber player). Not the exact lines, but the Ducks have something like:
McTavish Carlsson Sennecke
Gauthier Zegras Terry
??? ??? Colangelo
Mintyukov LaCombe
Solberg Luneau
Zellweger Helleson
There are some guys in the system that can maybe fill the ??? eventually like Sidorov, Pastujov, or prospects not in the AHL yet and the Ducks have a top 10 pick (likely) in this draft. Ducks pretty much need guys to hit reasonable expectations and to hit on one of the later (non-top 10 pick) forwards to be good.
TBH, I don't think we need to hit on a non top-10 forward pick. Just look at the forward collection you identified.
If Colangelo can stick in the NHL and this year's top-10 pick is a forward, then are kinda spoiled with the forward position. We would have invested in six top-10 forwards since 2019 to 2025, provided we draft a forward with our top-10 for this coming draft. And then we have Terry and Colangelo. We can and should find NHL talent outside the system to fulfill all of the other gaps in the forward lineup or our GM doesn't know how to GM.
Top-10 Forward investment
2019: C Z (9th OA)
2021: C Mac (3rd OA)
2022: LW Cutter (5th OA)
2023: C Carlsson (2nd OA)
2024: RW Sennecke (3rd OA)
2025: top-10 pick?
We just need time for our young forwards' bodies to develop and have an offensive minded coach to cultivate their offense at the NHL level. If we cannot develop our top-10 forward youths, then our GM has truly failed the organization. Relying on 2nd and 3rd round forwards to be saviors is disgusting when seeing how much we have already invested in top-10 forward picks.
Speaking of non top-10 forward picks that could surprise, maybe that could be Russian Artyom Galimov? He could potentially be a 3C with some offense at the NHL level. We'll see if we sign him away from the KHL.
Just to bring this back to Mac (since it's his thread), I still think Mac is a centerman and might still be our best centerman. Mac plays the same way when Carlsson is centering him and when Mac centers everyone else. Carlsson stays on the perimeter most of the time and lets Mac or Killorn or both grind it out.
Defensively, I hope we can stop rushing our youth D. We have mismanaged our youth D this season. Currently, all the Ducks have available at the AHL Level for defense are all youth D. We have no fringe vet D to be that buffer at the NHL level as a 7th D. That means even if we want to put Zell or Minty in the AHL, then we are just bringing up another youth D in RLD/RD Hinds, RD Luneau, or RD Warren. Another youth would be sitting out for an extended period of time not developing on the ice.
We are very lucky to have LaCombe rise up to playing like he's a top-pairing D. He's ranked #8 in U25 scoring in the NHL for defensemen so far this season. Minty is our only top-10 drafted d-man and he's still learning the nuance of playing defense at the NHL level. Similarly, the same is said for Zell with his smaller stature.
It's kinda hilarious that we aren't panicked about filling out our blueline. We should be a bit concerned due to our lack of RD depth in our system. Without a 2nd round pick in this year's draft and it feels like we'll be drafting a forward with our potential top-10 pick, the org needs RD talent depth. I hope we're able to sign RD Moore out of college. He might be our fastest skating natural RD in the org at the moment and at 6'3 to boot!
