Ever since Trevor Zegras was acquired by the Philadelphia Flyers from the Anaheim Ducks in June, we have been craving to see him on the ice in the Orange and Black. Seeing him stickhandle around the ice, making defenders look foolish, and being one of the players that brings us the most hockey joy in the NHL — watching Zegras every night can be as entertaining as fulfilling.
While we won’t see him in game action until potentially one of the first preseason games later this month for the Flyers, we did get a glimpse of him skating around and playing with his new teammates before the first day of rookie camp Thursday.
Trevor Zegras is a Philadelphia Flyer pic.twitter.com/VEA1WQJvIS
— Travis Ballinghoff (@travieballin26) September 11, 2025
Now, we do just see several seconds of actual game action in the clip of the pre-camp skate that was shared, but within them there are things we can already get hyped about.
First, Zegras does a quick little strip of the puck along the boards off of a defender that appears to be Emil Andrae and then with such incredible ease, sends a saucer pass across the zone, through two other defenders. It gets picked off by Garnet Hathaway but was clearly sent out there for Zegras’s buddy, Cam York, who promptly sends it to the net to force a glove save.
This little sequence is such a nice thing to see. To just watch a scoring chance unfold and it being created from Zegras’s stick is something we hopefully see more of this season. But, of course, this whole pre-camp unorganized scrimmage is just that — it’s the most casual hockey that these players will play for the next several months and they’re not caring too much about possession. Could Zegras pull off something like this in an actual NHL game? Yes, we’ve seen it happen in Anaheim before but maybe not as easy as not even having to lay any body on the line to get possession.
And with the contextual casualness of this skate, and the fact that it’s a player learning a new teammates tendencies and what he’s actually capable of doing, we will hopefully not see many potential scoring chances get interrupted by Garnet Hathaway assuming a skilled saucer is meant for him to get the shot. God bless him, but we probably would like to have seen what that play would’ve looked like if the puck went right to York to potentially get the goaltender in motion and rifle it up in the top left of the net. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see it play out again on NHL ice.
These brief several seconds only made the hype for Trevor Zegras being on the Philadelphia Flyers grow. All the excitement about the growth of Matvei Michkov, maybe having competent goaltending, and the focus on the new crop of high-end prospects the Flyers drafted — and their acquisition of Zegras almost got overshadowed. The moment we see the 24-year-old forward do something mind-bending on the power play in preseason and we’ll be only more excited to watch this team play 82 times next year.
The Flyers start their preseason games on Sept. 21 with a 7:00 p.m. matchup on Long Island facing the New York Islanders.
