Anaheim Ducks Team Preview: Can they get into the playoff race?

It’s been seven years since the Anaheim Ducks last made the playoffs, but the 2024-25 season can be looked back on as one in which the team took a notable step forward. The Ducks were one of the most improved teams year over year, jumping from 59 points in 2023-24 to 80 in 2024-25.

However, there remains a lot of work to do. Anaheim still missed the playoffs by 16 points and finished 8-9-3 in their last 20 games. The Ducks offence was 30th in the league, the power play worst overall, and they had a penalty kill that wasn’t much better.

A few more veterans were brought in over the summer. Chris Kreider was acquired from the Rangers for pennies on the dollar and he arrives motivated with two years left on his contract. Mikael Granlund was signed off the UFA market to a three-year deal with a $7 million AAV. While Kreider will be eyeing a bounce back, Granlund had one of the better offensive seasons of his career between San Jose and Dallas and was a top-four scorer for the Stars in three playoff rounds.

Although finishing as one of the most improved teams in 2024-25 brings promise this new season, the tougher job is to make up the rest of the difference and qualify for the playoffs. The veterans who dot the roster will play key leadership roles and be counted on to produce, but it’s the younger generation that will have to pull the hardest. Leo Carlsson, Mason McTavish (more on him later), Cutter Gauthier and Jackson LaCombe all need to keep progressing if Anaheim’s long rebuild is going to pay off with some post-season hockey.

The Ducks are the first franchise up in our look at 32 teams in 32 days, and here’s what to look out for in Anaheim this season.

Newcomer to watch: Chris Kreider

Last season was an utter disaster for the New York Rangers, and Kreider was right in the middle of it all. The longest-tenured player of the team and a vocal member of the leadership group, Kreider wasn’t pleased when Jacob Trouba was dealt early in the season and then he struggled throughout. Kreider did manage to score 22 goals, though that was one of the lower totals of his career, and with just eight assists, he finished with a measly 30 points. Now 34 years old, is Kreider down the road of age-related decline, or can he return to form and help show Anaheim the way to a playoff push after he was moved in a salary-dumping trade?

Under-the-radar player to watch: Tristan Luneau

The Ducks have a wealth of young defencemen and their top three scorers from the blue line last season were all 23 and under: Jackson LaCombe, Pavel Mintyukov and Olen Zellweger. Those three are all also left shots. On the right, veterans Trouba and Radko Gudas will still get big minutes, but are in the final season of their contracts. This is why we should keep an eye on Tristan Luneau in training camp. The 21-year-old was AHL San Diego’s top scorer last season and finished third in scoring among all defencemen in the league. A second-round pick in 2022, Luneau brings an offensive upside that could garner an opportunity with a good camp, or a quick call up during the season.

Top Prospect: Beckett Sennecke

When the Ducks took Sennecke third overall in the 2024 draft, some saw it as reaching for a player over the likes of Ivan Demidov or Tij Iginla. Returning to OHL Oshawa for his draft plus-one season, Sennecke improved by nine goals and 18 points and was a driving force in returning the Generals to the OHL Final. Sennecke has grown a few inches and added considerable weight, bringing him closer to being ready for the NHL, though the Ducks‘ signing Kreider and Granlund over the summer has limited any shot of earning a top-nine role this season.

Sennecke is not old enough to play in the AHL yet and because he already signed his entry-level deal with the Ducks, he’s also not eligible to switch over to the NCAA. If he doesn’t crack the Ducks lineup, Sennecke will return to major junior. There, he’ll get another shot to make Team Canada for the WJC, a roster he was surprisingly left off a year ago. This time around, he could be counted on to be one of their key players.

1. Will Mason McTavish sign or will he be traded?

GM Pat Verbeek has played hardball with young players before. In 2023, when both Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale were RFAs, the Ducks did not come to terms with those players until Oct. 2 and Oct. 5, respectively. This year, it’s Mason McTavish, fresh off a 22-goal, 52-point season. It’s not often that a 22-year-old centre picked third overall gets traded, especially after three good seasons to begin an NHL career, so odds are that a deal will get done. But if the season starts without one, look out.

2. Can Lukas Dostal build on last season and make Anaheim’s big investment worth it?

After years of trade speculation, the Ducks finally moved on from John Gibson, trading him to Detroit on July 1. The reason they could feel good doing so was that Dostal had such a strong season and has now played more than half of the games two years in a row — he has a .902 save percentage in 98 games from 2023-24 through 2024-25. Just 17 days after trading Gibson, the Ducks signed the 25-year-old Dostal to a five-year extension with a $6.5-million cap hit. Can he now prove that he can be the goalie Anaheim needs in this next window of development, when they’ll be eyeing a move out of the rebuild and into a playoff race?

3. Will Jackson LaCombe‚s breakout continue?

One of the best stories from this team last season was LaCombe, a second-round pick from 2019 who jumped from 17 to 43 points between 2023-24 and 2024-25. The 12 goals he scored at even strength last season was tied for seventh among all NHL defencemen, with Quinn Hughes and Rasmus Dahlin, and the individual high-danger chances he got at five-on-five ranked behind only Zach Werenski and Cale Makar at the position. Invited to Team USA’s Olympic orientation camp in September, LaCombe will be looking to follow up his breakout season with international recognition.