Ducks Looked To Add Veteran in Summer, That’s Why Jacob Trouba Made Sense
The New York Rangers and Anaheim Ducks made a trade last Friday. New York sent their captain, Jacob Trouba, to Anaheim for Urho Vaakanainen and a fourth-round pick in the 2025 NHL Draft. However, it appears the Ducks were looking to add some free agents and veteran leadership to their group in the summer.
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Despite what the outside world thought, Ducks GM Pat Verbeek thought his team was further along in the rebuild process than others. Verbeek felt like the Ducks were ready to compete, as ESPN Hockey Analyst Emily Kaplan noted this past Wednesday on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio before the trade happened on Friday.
“I know it’s funny, because with Anaheim, I felt like beginning of last year, I was hearing some people say that they were talking to Pat Verbeek, and he felt like the team was a lot closer than a lot of people thought that,” Kaplan said. “He thought that they were ready to take that next step, and that’s why this summer, he was in on a lot of these big free agents. And he didn’t get all of them. He didn’t get any of them, but he was in conversations about them, which showed you what he thought about his team.”
That is why the Ducks wanted to get Trouba out west despite Anaheim being on his 15-team no-trade list. According to sources close to RG, soon after the trade happened that Verbeek and the Ducks tried to get Trouba from the Rangers in the summer.
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Later on Friday evening, TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun noted and confirmed the report saying talks on trading Jacob Trouba went back to the summer.
“If you go back to last summer of the draft at the sphere in Vegas, there was a lot of trade talk involving Jacob Trouba, who, at the time, was not in the frame of mind to wave for personal reasons. We don’t need to get into that now, but it dates back, is my point.”
So, while people are left scratching why the Ducks if you look at it, it makes sense considering the young talent, you need veteran pieces like Trouba and Radko Gudas to protect young players like Leo Carlsson and Mason McTavish.
So it made sense from their perspective, as Mike Kelly of NHL Network pointed out.
“And the biggest thing for me, for the Anaheim Ducks acquiring Trouba is you’re getting a guy who was a captain,” Kelly said. “You’re getting a guy who’s a veteran, who’s a leader. You got a lot of young players, their defenseman, forwards. Doesn’t matter. You cannot have enough guys like that in the room to help these guys develop. They’ve got the cap space over the next couple of years. It’s just not a big concern there, either.”
Not to mention, with Trouba knowing it was his last year in New York and the Rangers knowing they would want to move on from him, they will get a motivated player. You could see his play on the ice dipped, and he was not the same player. Even Jacob Trouba admitted that the trade speculation got in his head and affected his game.
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Now, he is in a place where he is wanted and could help change the culture of the Anaheim Ducks, so the Ducks had the cap space to make this work.
Many will now watch to see if the Rangers will later acquire Frank Vatrano to fill that first-line right-wing role.
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