The 2025 NHL Draft is mere days away, and the Anaheim Ducks [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/anaheim-ducks] hold nine total picks in the seven rounds of the draft, including the tenth overall selection after dropping two spots at the NHL Draft Lottery, where they had the eighth-best odds of winning. The number ten pick will be their seventh straight top ten pick and hopefully their last, as they intend to push for a playoff spot in the 2025-26 season. The 2025 draft class is a fascinating one for the Ducks (and every team), as there isn’t an obvious franchise-changing forward or two (or three, or four) at the top like there was in 2023, and there isn’t a plethora of highly-touted defensemen projected to go inside the top ten like there was in 2024. 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In the pipeline and hoping to break through and join the aforementioned group in the next year or two are pieces like Beckett Sennecke, Stian Solberg, and Tristan Luneau. Looking ahead to the 2025 Draft, where there are a lot of excellent and translatable players that will likely be available for the Ducks at ten, which among them represent the best fits for the Ducks’ future core? Defenseman Matthew Schaefer appears to have pulled ahead as the projected first overall pick to be selected by the New York Islanders [https://thehockeynews.com/nhl/new-york-islanders] on Friday afternoon in Los Angeles. Immediately following Shaefer is a sizable list of talented forwards that includes Michael Misa, James Hagens, Porter Martone, Caleb Desnoyers, and Anton Frondell. Should any of those players be available to the Ducks at number ten, they’d likely be the easy, slam-dunk, home run pick. Two players who are a little less certain, but will likely fall somewhere in the middle of the top ten, are centers Brady Martin and Jake O’Brien. Again, they aren’t expected to be available at ten, but if they are, they’d be excellent fits with high upside for the Ducks: Martin being a potential emotional and physical driver of an entire team, and O’Brien being a crafty and cerebral play-creator. If those eight players are selected within the top nine, as can be expected, that will leave a handful of talented players with varying skillsets for the Ducks to potentially choose between. Photo Credit: Jeremy Champagne / Brandon Wheat Kings [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/2ceb74bd-583d-4fda-9b5c-5a245a847628.jpeg] Photo Credit: Jeremy Champagne / Brandon Wheat Kings ROGER MCQUEEN Were it not for a back injury, specifically a fracture in the L4/L5 vertebrae, there’s a high likelihood McQueen would have been selected well within the top five of this draft, based on talent and prior production alone. As it stands, however, McQueen was only able to suit up for a total of 17 regular season games for the Brandon Wheat Kings of the WHL, where he scored 20 points (10-10=20). He was able to briefly return to action in the WHL playoffs, notching one goal in three games before he suffered a muscle strain reportedly caused by overcompensation from his recovering back. He is said to be 100%, but his situation is eerily similar to that of 2024 fourth overall selection Cayden Lindstrom, who suffered a disc injury early in his draft season and missed the entirety of his first post-draft season. On the ice, McQueen is a truly unique blend of size and skill who even compares his game to that of Ducks legend Ryan Getzlaf. He’s not quite as physically engaged as Getzlaf was throughout his career, but the puck skills and usage of space on the ice are similar. What McQueen brings that Getzlaf only flashed in his career is a willingness to unleash his above-average shot. McQueen is as good at finding open ice off-puck as he is at finding teammates for looks when on-puck. He can create off the cycle and the rush with equal potency and has a willingness to provide a 200-foot impact. McQueen is one of the highest-risk/highest-reward draft-eligible prospects in recent memory, but if he hits, a potential 1-2-3 punch down the middle in Anaheim featuring Carlsson, McTavish, and McQueen is as physically and skillfully imposing as any center trio could hope to be and McQueen could fit seamlessly between wingers of any skillset. Phot Credit: Brian Liesse / Seattle Thunderbirds [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/ff741e38-b427-4c5e-b328-930b66ba3c47.jpeg] Phot Credit: Brian Liesse / Seattle Thunderbirds RADIM MRTKA Of the six recent top ten picks in the Ducks organization (Zegras, McTavish, Gauthier, Mintyukov, Carlsson, Sennecke), there sits only one defenseman. Among young defensemen in the organization, LaCombe had a breakout season in 2024-25, Zellweger is a former CHL defenseman of the year, Solberg continues to impress at every level in which he plays, and Luneau made the 2024-25 AHL All-Rookie team, but a reasonable question could be raised about the ceilings of the individuals in that stable of blueliners. Is there a true elite number-one defenseman among them? It’s highly unlikely Mrtka is that truly elite number-one defenseman, but his skillset would round out any future defensive core in the NHL. At a towering 6-foot-5.75 and 218 pounds, Mrtka has rare elite shutdown capabilities given his stride, four-way mobility, and angling intellect. He’s excellent on retrievals, quickly finding optimal outlets to ignite clean exits, and he patrols the offensive blueline with deftness and poise. Drawbacks to his game are few, but a lack of physical assertion and questionable compete levels may be cause for him to drop outside the top ten of this draft. After a tough 21-game start to his 2024-25 campaign in his native Czechia, Mrtka made the transition to North America to play in the WHL for the Seattle Thunderbirds. The fit was impactful and immediate, as he finished the season with 35 points (3-32=35) in 43 games while logging an astounding amount of minutes in all situations. He added three assists in six playoff games and notched four points (1-3=4) in five games at the U18 World Championship, playing for Czechia. If some of the intangible aspects of his game can be ironed out, Mrtka has top pair potential. If the Ducks were to select him with the tenth overall pick, he could one day be a perfect complementary piece to one of the supreme offensive talents like LaCombe, Mintyukov, or Zellweger on the left side of the Anaheim blueline. Photo Credit: David Reginek-Imagn Images [https://deweb-519a7.b-cdn.net/post-images/7e9b800c-a761-4457-9455-d9c86dada617.jpeg] Photo Credit: David Reginek-Imagn Images VICTOR EKLUND There seems to be an ever-increasing belief that Eklund won’t hear his name called in the first ten picks on Friday evening, despite his talent perhaps dictating his deservedness. When it comes to the top of the draft, general managers and front offices are more risk-averse and tend to select players with desirable size and who play premium positions. Of his five first-round selections in his first three drafts as general manager of the Ducks, the slightest player Pat Verbeek has selected has been Pavel Mintyukov, who measured in at 6-foot-1.5 and 194 pounds at his draft combine. Aside from his 5-foot-11, 169-pound frame, Eklund has every tool necessary to be a high-end producer at the NHL level. His skating is explosive, shifty, and slippery. He’s a puck hound, he gets pucks to the dangerous areas of the ice seemingly at will, and he possesses a high hockey IQ. He simply impacts play over all 200 feet of ice surface on every shift and is dangerous whether the puck is on his stick or not, and if it’s not, it soon will be. In 2024-25, Eklund scored 31 points (19-12=31) in 42 games for Djurgardens IF of HockeyAllsvenskan. He represented Sweden at the World Junior Championships, where he notched six points (2-4=6) in seven games en route to a loss in the bronze medal game. Djurgardens won the league and were promoted to the SHL for the 2025-26 season. Eklund scored seven points (2-5=7) in 16 qualification games. Should the Ducks consider drafting him with the tenth pick, Eklund’s brand of pace, skill, and tenacity would pair well with any combination of linemates the Ducks currently have on the roster or in the organization. He can make high-speed reads off of dynamic transition players like Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier, or he can dominate a cycle game alongside Mason McTavish. Looking back on the 2020 and 2021 drafts, players with similar profiles to Eklund were Lucas Raymond and Victor’s brother, William Eklund. They both weighed in at 5-foot-10 or 5-foot-11 and roughly 170 pounds. Raymond was selected with he fourth overall pick in 2020, and William Eklund was selected with the seventh in ’21. Both were able to add necessary strength to compete at the NHL level, and both would have strong cases to be selected in the top two in a redraft of their respective draft classes. If Victor Eklund is selected outside the top nine of the 2025 NHL Draft, he will likely have fallen farther than he should have. There’s little doubt his selection will be seen as a remarkable value pick, wherever that may be. 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