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Ducks prospects: Beckett Sennecke proving the team right

February 18, 2025

While many of the Ducks’ top 25-and-under players are already competing for the parent club, they still have reinforcements on the way from the junior, minor pro and European pro levels.

As their core grows, it could also expand, especially given that the Ducks had two first-rounders this season on the heels of 2023-24, when they added one lottery pick in the draft and another recent one via trade in current NHL’ers Leo Carlsson and Cutter Gauthier.

The league’s prolonged pause for the 4 Nations Face-Off shifted the spotlight onto the aspirants who could soon join a team that already has enough university-aged players to fill a fraternity house.

Beckett Sennecke

Sennecke himself was stunned to be selected third overall in June, but he has more than justified his draft standing and Ducks GM Pat Verbeek’s confidence in him. The Oshawa Generals’ virtuoso was named the 21st-best player in the world under 23 by The Athletic’s Corey Pronman, on a list that included established NHL stars like Ottawa’s Tim Stützle and generational prospects such as Chicago’s Connor Bedard.

The 19-year-old forward has placed fifth in goals and eighth in points in the Ontario Hockey League, despite beginning his campaign recovering from a stress fracture in his foot and missing a handful of games this season. Sennecke was the league’s Player of the Month in December, when he burst forth with 22 points in eight games. Half that scoring came in a three-game spurt that he capped off with a goal-of-the-year candidate, abusing San Jose lottery pick Sam Dickinson in the process. On Valentine’s Day, he gave the Guelph Storm the unwelcome gift of his third hat trick of the season.

Tristan Luneau

Luneau, 21, started each of the past two seasons in the NHL, but a tempered development plan last year was knocked askew by a viral infection that cost him not only a chance to play for Canada at the World Junior Championships but also the remainder of his campaign. Toned up at the gym and tuned into the film room, Luneau was raring to go during the summer and preseason.

Yet a crowded blue line and some refinements needed in his game against top competition landed Luneau back in San Diego with the American Hockey League’s Gulls. He leads all AHL defensemen who’ve played 30 matches or more in points per game. His explosive skating, robust physique and relentlessness seem sure to make him as popular among fans as he already is within the organization.

Rest of the best

Sam Colangelo and Sasha Pastujov have each chased a point-per-game pace in San Diego thus far. Goalie Tomas Suchanek’s severe knee injury destabilized the Gulls’ net and while the Ducks’ most prized goalie prospect, Damian Clara, hasn’t yet arrived in North America, he did switch up the ambiance abroad. He was playing in Sweden’s top league for the first time after last season’s sterling debut at the relegation level with Brynäs IF, the franchise for which former Duck Jakob Silfverberg plays. Yet the Ducks were dissatisfied with the development of the towering Italian by his new club, Färjestad BK, leading to a transfer for Clara to Finnish side Kärpät.

The Ducks’ other 2024 first-rounder, defenseman Stian Solberg, has also played with Färjestad this season, his first outside his native Norway. He and the Norwegians were favored to win December’s Division 1 Group A World Junior Championship, but took bronze behind champion Denmark and runner-up Austria. Elsewhere overseas, unsigned 2020 Ducks fifth-rounder Arytom Galimov has enjoyed a breakout season, currently placing fifth in scoring in the Kontinental Hockey League, where only one other NHL prospect, No. 5 overall pick Ivan Demidov, ranks in the top 10.

Orange County Register

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Ducks prospects: Beckett Sennecke proving the team right

Beckett Sennecke

Tristan Luneau

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