What would a hypothetical trade package for Trevor Zegras look like for the Blackhawks?

How the trade would benefit the Blackhawks and Ducks long-term

If you’re looking for a complete visual of the trade, you can check it out below. As you’ll notice, I added another mid-round pick for the Blackhawks to create balance, but overall, we’re giving one team immediate returns while the other gets a solid outlook for the future. 

The Ducks will likely have another top-five pick next season, and even with a player like Zegras, the Blackhawks 2025 first-rounder would have probably also factored into the top 10. This would give Anaheim a pair of high draft picks for 2025, plus a prospect in Lukas Reichel, who, if the Blackhawks didn’t think he could be the real deal, wouldn’t have brought him back into the system. 

Reichel will be a full-time NHLer, whether it’s in Chicago or, in this hypothetical trade, Anaheim. At worst, he will line up in the middle-six and could potentially provide solid defensive play, even if he never becomes the scorer a team would have initially expected from him. 

Meanwhile, the Blackhawks would add yet another strong forward, and given their lackluster scoring, even with Connor Bedard arriving on the scene and Philipp Kurashev breaking out, they need more, and quickly. Zegras alleviates a lot of that uncertainty, and with Bedard and Kurashev gaining valuable experience, the Hawks scoring should rank somewhere between 21st and 25th in the league in the process. 

(Statistics provided by Hockey-Reference)