The long, winding rebuild that has been going on in Anaheim since 2018 looks to be on the upswing. The team has taken steps to become a team worth watching again. They’ve become a team that isn’t an easy out anymore.
When the Anaheim Ducks started this rebuild, moving on from the core of Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, they began to look for the future of the franchise. They were drafting high, making plenty of picks, and they thought they seemed to be on the right track.
The selections of Trevor Zegras and Jamie Drysdale in 2019 and 2020, respectively, looked to have them on the right track. Both players looked very promising in their first steps into the NHL. Zegras was the kind of player who was quite literally put on the cover of the NHL video game. There was excitement around the Ducks. The losing didn’t stop, though.
In 2021 and 2022, Mason McTavish, Pavel Mintyukov, and Olen Zellweger were added to the prospect pool and made their debuts. The losing still didn’t stop. The Ducks continued to be a team without structure and without purpose on most nights.
In 2023, Anaheim drafted Leo Carlsson second overall. They moved Drysdale in a trade that brought them Cutter Gauthier. They followed that up by drafting Beckett Sennecke in 2024 and then moving Zegras as the relationship between the team and player soured.
Fast forward to this season, McTavish is playing a pivotal role as a top-six center. Gauthier leads the team in goals. Zellweger and Mintyukov are playing pivotal roles on the backend. Lukas Dostal, drafted in 2018, has become one of the better starting netminders in the NHL. Jackson Lacombe, drafted in the second round in 2019, has emerged as a top-pair blueliner, and Sennecke has 12 points as a rookie in just 17 games.
The Ducks are leading their division by one point, and they’ve played fewer games than the teams chasing them. The team's success has been impressive. They are getting contributions up and down the lineup, but it’s their young players leading the way.
Every team needs a centerpiece or a franchise player. They need the player that they plan on building around. For the Ducks, that’s been Leo Carlsson. The Ducks’ young star is sitting near the top of the NHL’s scoring list alongside players like Connor McDavid and Nathan MacKinnon. Coincidentally, going into Friday’s action, Carlsson was tied with Connor Bedard and Macklin Celebrini, the 2024 first overall pick, for third in NHL scoring.
The NHL's Top Scorers Prove Tanking And Rebuilding WorkJust how many top-end NHL draft picks are dominating the scoring race? The answer gives more proof to the benefits of going all in on a rebuild instead of retooling.When Carlsson was drafted second overall, so much of the discussion was about the Chicago Blackhawks taking Bedard first overall. The buzz around Carlsson was that the Ducks weren’t taking Adam Fantilli, who wound up going to Columbus at third overall. Matvei Michkov was the talk of the draft because he was supremely talented, but fears of the ‘Russian factor’ were whispered about throughout the draft process.
Carlsson was the least fun and exciting option of the players at the top of that draft.
A little more than two years later, he’s the top line center on one of the league’s most talented young squads. The franchise player that they are set to build around for the next decade or more.
What has made Carlsson so special this season is that while he’s scoring the lights out, he has grown into an impactful two-way presence in the mold of Aleksander Barkov or Auston Matthews. His size, skating, and intelligence at both ends of the ice have made him one of the truest two-way forces in the NHL in the early season.
Carlsson has shown flashes in his first couple of seasons. His physical pace has now caught up to his intelligence on the defensive side of the puck. So often, he had the right intentions, but he was just a bit late to the board battle or the loose puck. This year, he’s on time, every time.
His speed and power have become more consistent this year. He’s growing into his frame, and the connections between how his mind operates and what his body is capable of have been evident. It’s allowed him to lean on opponents and take the puck when the game slows down and then burst away with speed.
Through the neutral zone, Carlsson is not only capable of carrying the puck, but he is more than happy to utilize teammates, working passing plays to evade pressure and navigate through traffic. His understanding of pressure has become a strength, absorbing as much as he can before deferring to teammates.
Leo Carlsson's Skating Transformed from Perceived Weakness to his Biggest StrengthDraft scouts pegged Carlsson's skating as a weakness, but the Ducks saw a future star. Now, his improved stride fuels his game-changing impact.When he gets into the offensive zone, his physical and mental growth have made him one of the league's more lethal dual-threat power forwards. He plays through contact, draws in defenders and then can swing off pressure before hitting a teammate in open ice or use the defender as a screen and fire a pinpoint shot through their feet. Carlsson’s heavy shot has become a legitimate weapon for the Ducks, and opposing teams can’t key in on it because of his vision and passing.
When you start to look at some of the advanced numbers and the underlying stats, Carlsson’s arrival seems even more evident. He’s one of two players in the top 15 of league scoring who have less than 17 percent offensive zone starts, at 16.7 percent, according to moneypuck.com. He also leads that same group in defensive zone starts at 16.9 percent. Only two other players in the league's top 15 scorers are above 14 percent.
Carlsson is currently rocking a 61 percent Corsi and a 59 percent Fenwick, well above average in shot share. His on-ice expected goals percentage is 56 percent. His on-ice shot attempts per 60 minutes are 78.87, an insane rate. Whichever advanced metric you follow, Carlsson looks fantastic. This isn’t just smoke and mirrors. Carlsson’s arrival is legitimate.
Simply put, Carlsson has become borderline dominant on most nights. He’s ascending to the level of a true number one center with elite upside. At just 20 years old, Carlsson has become the franchise piece that the Ducks have hoped for.
Now it’s time for Carlsson and the Ducks to prove that this isn’t just a hot start.
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