Six potential trade destinations for Ducks center Mason McTavish

Jun 18, 2026, 15:08 EDT

Six potential trade destinations for Ducks center Mason McTavish

Credit: Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

It hasn’t even been a week since the Stanley Cup was awarded, but the 2026 NHL offseason is already shaping up to be one of the most fascinating in a long time.

Whenever a young center becomes available, chances are most of the league will express some degree of interest. And with the Anaheim Ducks reportedly fielding calls on Mason McTavish, who is just five years removed from being drafted at No. 3 overall, the potential for a massive blockbuster trade seems to be increasing by the day.

McTavish, 23, found himself somewhat sidelined under Ducks head coach Joel Quenneville in the 2025-26 season, skating primarily on the team’s third line and taking on much more of a supporting role compared to the likes of Cutter Gauthier, Leo Carlsson, and Troy Terry. McTavish was made a healthy scratch on multiple occasions, including in the playoffs, where the Ducks reached the second round for the first time since 2017.

The Ducks apparently view McTavish as a bit of a luxury up front, and they could be tempted to move him to address one of their other areas of need — or just to clear his contract, which he signed after a contentious negotiation last summer, off their books. Even at $7 million per year through 2031, McTavish will draw interest from many teams, and he’s not old enough to have any form of trade restriction, meaning it’ll be open season for the Ducks to auction him off to the highest bidder.

Here’s a look at five clubs that could express meaningful interest in McTavish this summer.

Calgary Flames

The Flames are probably the worst team on this list, but they’re also one of the only ones that could give McTavish the opportunity to grow alongside a core group of players in his age range. He’d immediately slot in as a top-six center with the Flames, especially after they traded Nazem Kadri to the Colorado Avalanche in March. McTavish would also reunite with former Ducks teammate and fellow alternate captain Ryan Strome, who joined the Flames in the immediate wake of Kadri’s departure.

McTavish’s dad, Dale, played his only NHL games with the Flames in the 1996-97 season. Mason has already become a more successful NHLer, with four consecutive 40-point seasons to begin his career. But it’s easy to imagine him taking another step forward in Calgary, potentially on a line with one or both of Matt Coronato and Matvei Gridin. The Flames would be able to absorb his cap hit without breaking a sweat, and they’d surely be able to give the Ducks a decent collection of assets in return; as an example, Calgary has eight second-round picks in the next three drafts.

It might be a little early for the Flames to make this kind of swing, but GM Craig Conroy has shown a willingness to add players within a certain age range, making decent-sized commitments to Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost, and Yegor Sharangovich since taking over in 2023. McTavish is younger and has the pedigree of a top-three pick. Assuming the cost isn’t too prohibitive, it’d make a certain degree of sense for the Flames to explore a deal.

Detroit Red Wings

The Red Wings aren’t quite back in the “Dead Things” era, but with their playoff drought now spanning a full decade and team captain Dylan Larkin actively seeking a trade, things aren’t exactly looking rosy for Michigan’s Original Six franchise. Even with Larkin, they looked to be at risk of being left behind in the ultra-competitive Atlantic Division. Without him? Good luck, boys.

Nevertheless, the Red Wings have to figure out how to move on from here, and if they want to stay in the hunt out East, they could sell Larkin for as much as they possibly can before turning around and buying McTavish for a relative discount. It’s presumptuous to say they might be able to come out ahead, but it certainly could be a favorable proposition. After all, McTavish is six-and-a-half years younger than Larkin, putting McTavish basically in lockstep with the likes of Lucas Raymond and Moritz Seider.

Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman has a lot of problems to solve this summer. Even beyond Larkin, he needs to figure out Alex DeBrincat, John Gibson, and Justin Faulk, who are each one year away from unrestricted free agency, as well as Patrick Kane, who can hit the open market July 1. The Red Wings don’t have a first-round pick in this year’s draft, and their prospect pool has become less robust as their top kids graduate to the NHL, meaning it might be tougher for them to put together a package to Anaheim’s liking. But would something involving Nate Danielson or Marco Kasper do the trick?

Montreal Canadiens

The Canadiens are the odds-on favorite to land McTavish this summer, and it’s easy to see why. They’re a very good young team that made it all the way to the Eastern Conference Final this year. Their young core is one of the very best in the league and is led by Cole Caufield, Nick Suzuki, Ivan Demidov, Juraj Slafkovsky, and Lane Hutson. And their most pressing weakness is behind Suzuki in the No. 2 center spot, where they often used Jake Evans, Phillip Danault, and Oliver Kapanen this past season.

The Canadiens need a second-line center in the worst way. This is a team that is on the verge of becoming one of the NHL’s top contenders, assuming their goaltending can hold up in the long run and their defense continues to improve. Adding a big, skilled center like McTavish to play with Demidov would instantly give Montreal one of the strongest top-six forward groups in the league while also pushing their contention window open even further.

Habs GM Kent Hughes is one of the more aggressive executives in the Eastern Conference. Just last summer, he paid a hefty price to acquire defenseman Noah Dobson from the New York Islanders. And with top prospect Michael Hage set to return to the University of Michigan for his junior year, Hughes doesn’t have many other internal options to deploy as Montreal’s No. 2 center in the immediate future. Hughes could easily dangle a couple of prospects from his top-ranked pool to command Anaheim’s attention.

Ottawa Senators

Ottawa Citizen NHL reporter Bruce Garrioch has suggested that the Senators are interested in McTavish, who has multiple ties to the National Capital Region. He played his youth hockey with the Ottawa Valley Titans, and his dad, Dale, was hired by Sens GM Steve Staios in 2023 to work for the club as a pro scout. Like Montreal, the Senators are also coming off a trip to the playoffs, but their 2025-26 season was much more turbulent, and they ended up being dispatched by the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round.

McTavish is a natural center, and the Senators are already quite well-equipped at the position, with Tim Stützle, Dylan Cozens, and Shane Pinto already in tow. But we saw McTavish play a significant portion of the 2025-26 season on the wing in Anaheim, and both Stützle and Cozens are also familiar with shifting to either side when necessary. As Claude Giroux ages, and with Fabian Zetterlund coming off of a disappointing season, the Senators could use another young top-six forward to add to their core group.

As Garrioch noted in his report in May, Staios has already traded for McTavish once in his managerial career: “Staios, then GM of Michael Andlauer’s Hamilton Bulldogs in the Ontario Hockey League, acquired McTavish in a trade with the Peterborough Petes in 2022.” There is plenty of familiarity here. And now that they’ve had their 2026 first-round pick reinstated by the league, the Senators might be a tad bit more comfortable parting with some of their other future assets to acquire a player of McTavish’s caliber …

St. Louis Blues

We already know there will be changes in St. Louis this summer, with Blues GM Doug Armstrong set to cede his managerial position to Alex Steen on July 1. But there has been plenty of discussion about the status of the Blues’ top players over the past few seasons, with both Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou seemingly always in the rumor mill. If one of those two ends up skipping town, could the Blues bring in McTavish as a replacement?

One of the biggest stories surrounding the Blues in the 2025-26 season had to do with the eventual fate of veteran defenseman Colton Parayko, who played an integral role in the club winning its first and only Stanley Cup championship in 2019. We all know that Parayko nixed a move to the Buffalo Sabres ahead of the 2026 trade deadline. But with John Carlson, Radko Gudas, and Jacob Trouba all slated to hit unrestricted free agency on Canada Day, how about a deal between the Blues and Ducks involving Parayko and McTavish?

We already know that the money would work. Parayko makes $6.5 million per season through 2030, representing a discount of just $500,000 from McTavish’s cap hit. As was established late last year, Parayko has full control over where he will end up, but it’s entirely possible that he views Anaheim as a better destination than Buffalo from a hockey and lifestyle standpoint. He’d certainly be pencilled into a significant role there from Day 1. Meanwhile, a McTavish-Dylan Holloway connection in St. Louis is certainly fun to think about.

Winnipeg Jets

Finally, it’s worth discussing the Jets, whose last experiment down the middle didn’t go so well. It’s certainly safe to say that McTavish represents a substantial upgrade over a 37-year-old Jonathan Toews, who capped off his NHL career with 29 points in 82 games with the Jets in the 2025-26 season and is about to hang up his skates. The Jets are coming off a highly disappointing season and could use a spark in the worst way, particularly considering the points that both Mark Scheifele and Connor Hellebuyck have reached in their careers (and their 30s).

Of the Jets’ seven highest-paid forwards, only one — Gabe Vilardi — will be under the age of 30 by the midway point of the 2026-27 season. But the Jets have also had a tough time graduating prospects over the past few years, with Cole Perfetti and Dylan Samberg being their only real developmental success stories in the last decade. Time and again, the Jets have deferred to low-upside veterans at the expense of giving their prospects NHL reps, which likely means they wouldn’t have as much trouble moving them to acquire a player like McTavish.

One interesting name worth considering is Neal Pionk, who has been a very good soldier in Winnipeg over the past seven seasons but could be moved out to make room for Elias Salomonsson, who showed legitimate signs of life for the Jets in the back half of the 2025-26 season. The Ducks sorely need a capable, cost-controlled right-hander to anchor their blueline moving forward. After the year they just had, the Jets might be a little more reluctant to move future draft selections, but perhaps they could work out a similar pick swap to the one the Sabres and San Jose Sharks made on Wednesday. Either way, McTavish would be a nice fit in a group with Scheifele, Vilardi, and Kyle Connor and would provide a much-needed offensive jolt to a Jets team still struggling to fill the void left by Nikolaj Ehlers last summer.

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