Ducks Sign Herman Träff to Entry-Level Deal, ATO With Gulls

Twenty-year-old Swedish winger Herman Träff signed a three-year entry-level contract with the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday and will join their AHL affiliate, the San Diego Gulls, on an amateur tryout for the remainder of the 2025-26 season. The deal begins officially in 2026-27, but Träff is heading to North America now, and the timing could not be more interesting for a Gulls club fighting for its playoff life.

San Diego enters the stretch run three points ahead of the Tucson Roadrunners for the final postseason spot in the AHL's Pacific Division with 11 games remaining. Träff, who at 6-foot-3 and 200 pounds is exactly the kind of physical winger who can thrive in those high-stakes, grind-it-out situations, will get meaningful minutes from the jump.

The signing caps a breakout season in Sweden's second-tier HockeyAllsvenskan. Träff posted 23 goals, 18 assists and 41 points in 51 games for IK Oskarshamn, a stat line that led all draft-year-plus-two skaters in the league by a considerable margin. For context, the next-closest D+2 skater was undrafted defenseman Leo Sundqvist, who recorded 19 points in 51 games for Ostersunds IK. Träff nearly doubled that output.

What makes the number even more significant is the trajectory behind it. In the 2024-25 season, Träff managed three goals and seven points in 25 SHL games with HV71 as a 19-year-old. He dropped back to Allsvenskan this past summer on a one-year deal with Oskarshamn and turned the move into a statement season. His total SHL experience stands at just 36 games, which means the AHL represents a genuine developmental leap onto a new continent playing a different style of hockey.

Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek assessed Träff plainly in his post-trade deadline conference call last March. "He's a big kid who has some nice skill," Verbeek said. "He has hockey sense. He plays with an edge and he's a big kid. And I like that. He's got an aggressive attitude when it comes to his physical game. Another piece that we can kind of look at to add to this team in the future."

Träff himself signaled this transition was coming. At Anaheim's development camp last July, he said: "I just feel like I'm gonna be at the place now (where I need to) play much, get more ice time and do my thing. I think it's going to be good, in Oskarshamn, to do that. We will see. It feels good, and I'm ready for it."

Träff was not always a Ducks prospect. New Jersey selected him 91st overall in the 2024 draft, but the Devils traded him, along with a 2025 second-round pick that became Lasse Boelius, to Anaheim at the 2025 trade deadline in exchange for veteran defenseman Brian Dumoulin with 50 percent salary retention attached. Dumoulin left New Jersey as a free agent that summer, and the Devils never needed the retention clause because Jack Hughes was placed on LTIR at the time. The transaction amounted to a 2024 third-round pick and a second-round pick for roughly six weeks of a 33-year-old defenseman on a team that had already moved on from its window.

For Anaheim, the return is only now beginning to come into focus. Unless Träff is particularly dominant in the Gulls' playoff push and through next fall's training camp, he will likely spend the bulk of the next season or two in San Diego, developing in the AHL's chaotic, physical environment before the Ducks consider him ready for the NHL. The foundation, however, is hard to argue with: 41 points at 20 years old in professional European hockey, with size, edge, and an organization that clearly sees him as a future piece.