As the Jack Eichel saga continues, one of the teams who seems to be consistently brought up as a potential landing spot for the talented center is the Anaheim Ducks.
Obviously, Eichel is a legitimate top-line center who’s still just 24 years old and has another five years remaining on his contract. A scenario where a player like this is available doesn’t come around very often and as a result, teams should be lining up to present monster trade packages to the Buffalo Sabres.
But the Anaheim Ducks shouldn’t be one of them.
The reasoning for this is that there’s likely no trade package that would make sense for Anaheim to part with in order to acquire him. Buffalo will want picks and quality prospects, which is exactly what the Ducks should be retaining in order to build a contender down the line.
When we look at who the Sabres would ask about, Jamie Drysdale and Trevor Zegras should be off limits, not only based on them being projected to be top players for a very long time, but also based on where the players are at in their careers. While Eichel is still young, he’s still five/six years older than Zegras and Drysdale respectively. The Ducks should be building around those two players, with other players in the same age group, like Max Comtois, prospects Jacob Perreault and Lukas Dostal, along with whoever is selected with the third-overall pick all in that same general age range.
A deal involving Eichel would almost surely have to include multiple of the players (and pick) mentioned above. But with quite a few good young pieces in the pipeline, yet a lack of talent on the current roster, there’s no reason for the Ducks to rush their rebuild and sell off those key young players, without a team in place that can compete right now.
It would be a different story if the Ducks already had the pieces around Eichel in place and he was the final addition to make Anaheim a true contender. This obviously isn’t the case though, as the Ducks are still a ways away from becoming a top team and acquiring Eichel would mean losing multiple of those good young pieces to build around. Realistically, you have to wonder whether the Ducks would actually be any better off in a few years down the line, when those younger players are having success elsewhere and the Ducks have a player who’d then be in his late 20s with minimal term left on his contract and a lack of good, young talent around him on the roster, as a result of the pieces moved in the trade.
While any team would be lucky to have Eichel, selling off key, young assets to acquire him simply doesn’t make sense for the Ducks, based on the stage they’re at right now in terms of competing. Anaheim is slowly but surely building a pretty decent prospect pool to compete down the road and depleting a chunk of it for a single player, while the team isn’t strong enough to truly compete right now, is the wrong move, in my opinion.
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Would you be in favour of the Ducks giving up prospects and picks in order to trade for Jack Eichel?
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