The Anaheim Ducks announced today that they’ve acquired forward Chris Kreider and a 2025 fourth-round pick from the New York Rangers in exchange for prospect Carey Terrance and a 2025 third-round pick. The deal was heavily reported to have been in the works yesterday, but the holdup in finalizing the trade was a result of Kreider having to agree to waive his partial no-trade clause for the move.
Kreider is 34 years old, and has spent his entire career with the Rangers to this point. A first-round pick in 2009, Kreider played nearly 900 games with the team across 13 seasons. The winger has two years remaining on his contract, at a $6.5M cap hit.
Kreider has been a top-six forward with New York for much of his tenure and reached career highs in the 2021-22 season, where he scored 52 goals and 77 points in 81 games. To this point, he’s produced at an 82-game rate of 30 goals and 54 points across his career. However, the winger did see a big dip in production this past season. While Kreider still managed 22 goals across 68 games, he added just eight assists, marking by far his lowest production pace in both assists and points since the time when he became a full-time NHLer over a decade ago.
Going back the other way, Terrance was a 2023 second-round pick by the Ducks and has spent the last four seasons in the OHL. While Terrance did represent the United States at the World Juniors last year and was one of the Erie Otters’ more productive forwards, he wasn’t able to reach the point-per-game mark in any season over his OHL tenure.
The move follows a pattern that we’ve seen repeated by the Ducks over much of Pat Verbeek’s tenure. While Verbeek has been hesitant to give up substantial future assets in any trade given the team’s position, he’s been more than willing to take on players from teams who are looking to shed their respective contracts. We’ve seen this over the past few years with Ilya Lyubushkin, Robby Fabbri, Brian Dumoulin, Jacob Trouba, and now Kreider.
The hope is that Kreider will be able to bounce back in a new situation. At his best, Kreider can be a very impactful winger and could be a big help to the team’s top nine. At the same time, it’s very much up in the air as to whether he’ll be able to do that, now into his mid-30s and moving to a team where there will arguably be fewer players around him who have shown a track record of being able to produce at a high rate.
Given the amount of cap space the team has available, it’s likely still a worthwhile gamble. There could be a lot of upside in the event that Kreider can bounce back, and in a worst-case scenario, it’s still only a two-year commitment.
The biggest factor will be about making sure this isn’t the only move the Ducks make up front. Kreider could be a nice pickup, but he shouldn’t be the highlight in terms of offseason additions for the team.
