Trevor Zegras is one of the more polarizing players in the NHL. The 22-year-old Anaheim Ducks center has built quite a reputation since entering the league in 2021. His flashy style of play has led to a long highlight reel of incredible goals, deft puck movement, and jaw-dropping passes in just over 200 NHL games. When the league tries to sell itself to television audiences, Zegras is front and center. However, the NHL 23 co-cover athlete doesn’t have the body of work of the league’s superstars, thus a lot of the attention on him has turned negative. A recent anonymous player poll has him as the most overrated player in the NHL (from, “Anonymous NHL player poll 2024: Who’s the best player? Most overrated? Best goalie? Worst road city,” The Athletic, Jan. 31, 2024).
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After a contract holdout took away most of his offseason and preseason, Zegras had a disappointing 2023-24 campaign. It was a Murphy’s Law season for the 2019 NHL Draft ninth-overall pick, starting with some hard luck on the scoresheet and further compounded with 51 games lost to two injuries. With a clean bill of health and a full year under head coach Greg Cronin’s system, a bounce-back season is expected — and necessary — from the young playmaker.
What Went Wrong for Zegras?
2023-24 was a season to forget for Zegras. After recording only two points in the first 12 games of the season, he was sidelined for nearly six weeks with a lower-body injury. He returned for eight games before going down with a broken ankle that kept him out of the lineup for another 11 weeks. By the time he was re-activated, the Ducks only had 10 games left in the season. In total, Zegras finished with 15 points (six goals, nine assists) in 31 games. After hovering around 0.8 points per game in his last two seasons, coming in at under half a point per game, even in a lost season, is disappointing.
To further compound the frustration, Zegras’ dud of a campaign came after a contractual holdout kept him out of training camp for nearly two weeks. Cronin wasn’t shy to suggest the lack of a ramp-up period contributed to Zegras’ early-season injury.
Bright Signs in a Bad Season
While most of the focus will be on what went wrong for Zegras last season, there were several positive signs to take away. The first would be an increased focus on defensive play. This was a major point of emphasis for Cronin in his first season at the helm in Anaheim, as he wanted to see Zegras improve his 200-foot game. While it’s difficult to quantify defensive gains in a lost season, he did have an uptick in some counting stats. Natural Stat Trick credited him with 15 takeaways, more than half his total from the prior season in 800 fewer minutes. His 15 blocked shots would have also trended towards a new career-best with a full season.
Additionally, while Zegras’ scoring was down, his underlying numbers suggested he wasn’t playing poorly. Cronin defended Zegras by mentioning the number of scoring chances he was getting. Through 12 games, he was fourth on the team in individual scoring chances, high-danger scoring chances, and expected goals, but he only had two points (one goal, one assist) before missing 20 games due to a lower-body injury.
At several points in the season, Zegras looked like he was about to “get right” after his slow start. After his first injury, he scored a Michigan-style lacrosse goal in his first game back in the lineup. He registered five points (three goals, two assists) in the eight games between his injuries — a tick below his career scoring rate but much better than his early-season sample size. While his broken ankle stopped him from building upon any consistency he was working toward, he returned in late March with an even higher scoring rate. In the final eleven games of the season, he recorded eight points (two goals, six assists).
Ducks Need a Zegras Bounce Back
When discussing Anaheim’s choices for their next captain earlier in the offseason, I referred to Zegras as the beating heart of this Ducks team. Other than injuries, a lot went right for Anaheim last season. Frank Vatrano exploded for 37 goals. Radko Gudas set career-high point totals. Mason McTavish proved he can center a scoring line. Leo Carlsson, Pavel Mintyukov, and Lukas Dostal showed they all have bright futures. Despite all this, the Ducks were a bottom-five team from mid-November until the end of the season. It’d be hard to argue they’re a playoff team with Zegras in the lineup for those 51 games, but he provides an energy that could have saved the team from some lifeless efforts down the stretch.
Zegras has been in trade rumors for months, but general manager Pat Verbeek isn’t tipping his hand. Trading him now would be selling at his lowest value, and Verbeek’s asking price is likely too cost-prohibitive to teams that view him as a reclamation project instead of an ascending star. As one of the lowest-scoring teams of the 2020s, the Ducks shouldn’t entertain moving Zegras. He’s one of the few young players who has proven they can score at a decent clip in the NHL, and at 22 years old there’s an argument to be made that he still has another level to hit.
If Zegras does bounce back, Anaheim’s rebuild will be in a great place. With McTavish, Leo Carlsson, Troy Terry, Cutter Gauthier, and, eventually, Beckett Sennecke, the Ducks have an encouraging top-six of the future, and it would further benefit from Zegras’ do-it-all playmaking ability. This is the most talent around him since he arrived in Anaheim, and he should be able to produce at the superstar level Ducks fans and the NHL marketing department are eager to see. He’s an arbitration-eligible restricted free agent after the 2025-26 season; both parties will likely want some conclusion before another lengthy holdout, and what Zegras does on the ice will go a long way to securing a long-term deal in Southern California.
Salary cap info courtesy of PuckPedia.
