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Top Trading Partners for Jack Eichel: Anaheim Ducks

by Chad DeDominicis - 5

Yesterday’s end-of-season media availability with Kevyn Adams didn’t help calm any of the Jack Eichel trade talks that exploded earlier this week. That means we’ll continue to press on with our trade discussions.

I kicked off this four-part series looking at my top trade partners for Eichel with the Los Angeles Kings yesterday. I’ll stay out on the west coast with my second team, the Anaheim Ducks. They stand out to me because they’re a team that Kevyn Adams could take advantage of with a general manager feeling desperate. Bob Murray doesn’t have a lot of time left if he doesn’t start to put a winning team on the ice. He also has a few aging players on the roster that he may want to try to make another run with.

Prospects/Young Assets

The other benefit of making a deal with the Ducks is they have one of the best prospect pools in the league. The player at the top of the list is 2019 ninth overall pick Trevor Zegras. The American-born forward led Team USA to a Gold Medal in the World Juniors and was named tournament MVP this past year. He carried that success over to the pro level with a strong rookie season. Zegras scored 10 goals and 21 points in 17 games with the San Diego Gulls in the AHL. He produced in the NHL too with 13 points in 24 games.

It’s a small sample and he’s only 20-years-old. You have to be careful not to be getting carried away, but he’s a promising prospect that the Sabres would certainly want to be included as the centerpiece in this deal.

Beyond Zegras, there are a handful of other young prospects the Sabres could have interest in at a variety of positions. A few names they could explore are Jacob Perreault, Lukas Dostal, Jackson LaCombe, Isac Lundestrom, and Henry Thrun.

Dostal is an interesting prospect to consider. The 20-year-old goaltender had a strong season in Liiga and AHL. He was the best goalie in Liiga as a teammate of Arttu Ruotsalainen at Ilves. He left Finland with a .941 save percentage and backed that up with a .916 save percentage in the AHL with the Gulls.

Of course, goaltenders are voodoo, but the Sabres could use some depth at the position in their organization.

Another young player I got a good look at this season at the University of Minnesota is Jackson LaCombe. He’s a left-shot defenseman that has a strong two-way game. He skates well and has the potential to develop into a second-pair defenseman.

You can see in my tracking data of Gopher’s defensemen above that LaCombe was on a similar level to that of Brock Faber in primary shot contributions at 5 on 5. In Byron Bader’s model, you can see below the step that LaCombe took this past season based on his point production in his D+2 season.

Ryan Johnson didn’t have the point production of LaCombe so that’s why we see a difference here in improvement. However, along with Faber, these two defenders were a big part of why the Gophers won the Big Ten.

Draft Picks

The Ducks are not flush with draft picks like the Kings or some other teams that could get involved in the Eichel sweeps. They also may not want to give up a top-five pick in the upcoming draft. That’s actually not the end of the world if the Sabres get a 2022 first-round pick from them. That draft looks like it’ll be a strong class sitting here a year out.

Depending on what other pieces are included, the Sabres could ask for more picks in 2021, 2022, and 2023. The Ducks currently have at least one pick in every round, except for the seventh-round, over the next three years.

Taking Money Back

Time for us to talk about taking the vegetables in this meal. The Ducks will need the Sabres to take back money to make this deal work. The obvious choice is 31-year-old center, Adam Henrique. He has three years on contract remaining with a $5.825 million cap hit. He was waived by the Ducks at one point this season and hasn’t lived up to his contract.

Having said that, he can still be an NHL player and a veteran presence in a lesser role with the Sabres. In Micah McCurdy’s isolated impact model he’s a break-even player with above-average finishing ability.

He’s on the downside of his career, but if the Sabres are going to go into a two-year “reset” carrying his contract won’t be that big of a deal..

Trade Projection

I think the Sabres can get a strong deal from the Ducks. Especially if they take back the contract of Henrique. It would allow them to pull one or two more assets out of Murray. Here is my trade projection with the Ducks:

Ducks receive: Jack Eichel

Sabres receive: Trevor Zegras, Jackson LaCombe, Lukas Dostal, Adam Henrique, 2022 first-round pick, and 2023 second-round pick

This may seem like a lot to Ducks fans, but I break this trade down into two parts. The pieces of Zegras, LaCombe, and the first-round pick are the costs for Eichel. The second-round pick and Dostal are the cost for taking on the contract of Henrique.

Well, that’s two down and two more to go in this series.

Data via: Hockeyviz.com and Byron Bader
Photo Credit: Debora Robinson/NHLI via Getty Images
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5 thoughts on “Top Trading Partners for Jack Eichel: Anaheim Ducks”

  2. So much pressure on Zegras if something like this shakes out. Very good prospect but maybe I’d want more of a sure thing coming back.

    1. I get where you’re coming from but that’’s hard to get from a team that lacks sure things. Zegras is as close to that as we can acquire. There is also the possibility of Anaheim wanting to include Silvferberg.

  4. Is there a Colorado one of these slated, because they’re sitting on some real interesting parts I think could be made to work.

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