When the puck drops on the 2024-25 season for the Anaheim Ducks, Mason McTavish will be entering his third full season in the NHL. After a solid rookie season and a second hampered by injury, lulls, and discipline issues, the time is now for the former Olympian, World Junior champion, and now-veteran of 153 games to cement his status as a top young forward in the league. The Ducks have many players billed with that potential, and soon enough, one (or some) of them will hopefully make that leap and truly break into star, or superstar, status. Could it be McTavish this season? Quite possibly.
McTavish Started 2023-24 Red Hot Before Cooling Off Midseason
Whether by design or not, McTavish began last season with Frank Vatrano and Ryan Strome as linemates. Leo Carlsson, Trevor Zegras, and Alex Killorn, who made sense as linemates for McTavish, were not available to begin the campaign. That didn’t matter, as the McTavish-Strome-Vatrano combination was the best line for the Ducks early on. It was the ultimate surprise that each of them finished the season’s first five weeks as near-point-per-game players, and the Ducks went 7-4-1, including a six-game winning streak.
The McTavish-Vatrano connection persisted while the former was healthy, but injuries became a concern for the 2021 third-overall pick in December. He missed games in bunches the rest of the way before suffering a final significant injury in a win over the Calgary Flames on April 2 that ended his season. In total, he dressed in 64 games and accumulated 42 points (19 goals, 23 assists), nearly identical to the 17-goal, 26-assist campaign a season prior (albeit in 18 fewer games.) To give a sense of how fast he started, and how slowly he ended, consider the fact that half of his points came in the team’s first 20 games. His rise to stardom appeared well ahead of schedule and was in early talks as the NHL’s best sophomore, a class that included Wyatt Johnston, Matty Beniers, and Owen Power. His final 44 games, however, were riddled with injuries and scoreless streaks.
2024-25 Offers a Restart for Core Beset by Injuries and Discipline Issues
Few Ducks were spared from the injury bug last season. Many of them were simultaneous, resulting in an absurdly low number of games where Zegras, McTavish, Killorn, Carlsson, Vatrano, and Terry were all in the lineup together. We never really saw what this top six forward group could do, and, let’s be honest, this…
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