There were several questions surrounding the Ducks top prospect entering the 2025-26 season.

Is Beckett Sennecke ready for the NHL? Can the 19-year-old deal with the physicality at this level? Should he be sent back down to junior hockey? Did the Ducks make a mistake drafting him at No. 3 overall in 2024?

“I don’t think he realizes that there are some pretty tough players in the league here,” linemate Cutter Gauthier said with a laugh. “He’s been doing a great job of defending himself, not taking shit from anyone.”

Now, only two questions seem to remain: does Sennecke stick with Anaheim past the nine-game, entry-level-contract threshold at the end of this current road trip, which continues Tuesday in Nashville? And does he stay with the Ducks for the full season? So far, the early results point to two more resounding rounds of “yes.”

Due to an injury to Ryan Strome on the eve of the season opener that necessitated Mikael Granlund moving from second-line winger to third-line center, Sennecke was given a golden opportunity to move from the fourth line into the top six, and he skated away with it.

Over a week into his NHL career, the 19-year-old scored a goal on his first NHL shot, netted goals in his first two career games and registered points each of his first three games. The Toronto native is also tied for second in points among NHL rookies.

With Sennecke averaging 18:30 of ice time through five games, Anaheim’s “Kid Line” with Mason McTavish centering Gauthier and Sennecke is fourth in the NHL in expected goal share (67.1%) among lines with at least 40 minutes played together, according to MoneyPuck. The trio has played the third-most minutes together out of any line combination in the league.

Pretty decent for a line that had just one day of practice and a morning skate together before taking off like a rocket.

“We gelled pretty well in practice once we started playing with each other,” Gauthier said. “We’re always connected. It feels like there’s guys all around the ice, never on an island, which is good. When we’re playing against good teams, you need support all over the ice to make plays, a little give and go. So far, it’s been good. We got to keep building on it.”

None of this is to say that Sennecke is the reason this line is clicking or that Gauthier and McTavish wouldn’t have produced with Granlund on their wing. However, Sennecke is far from out of place.

Beyond the actual production, Sennecke is showing poise on and off the puck.

“He’s always open, and has a unique way of creating space,” Gauthier said. “He’s got really good hands, and he carries the puck really well. He likes finding me and Mac, which is great, but he’s able to hold on to the pucks too and not get bumped off the puck’s really easy. That’s a hard thing to do coming into the NHL as a 19-year old.”

It’s that last notion that has been among Sennecke’s most impressive traits, considering how he entered Ducks rookie camp back in September.

As Anaheim’s top prospect, he drew plenty of focus at the Golden State Rookie Faceoff, and there were initial concerns. Despite beefing up with a listed 10-pound growth, he was still being muscled off pucks, and if that was happening in rookie camp, how would he make it through the preseason?

Then in the preseason, when he wasn’t being bumped off pucks, he was making ill fated backhand passes. If he was doing that under preseason pressure, how would he make it to the NHL roster?

Simply? Sennecke steadily progressed, growing stronger, calmer and smarter with each passing practice.

“I thought he had progressed really while in camp,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said in Seattle before his debut. “Seemed like every day he got a little bit more confident with the puck. It seemed like he was stronger, using a little bit more of the size and his strength, and I thought he had a really good camp.”

There are still plenty of things to work on for Sennecke, and he even said himself that that will “continue for years” and “you’re never perfect in this league.”

The question then becomes where is the best place for him to do that and how should it be done? That’s where the developmental plans come in.

Verbeek and Quenneville initially said the approach would be similar to the plan Leo Carlsson had in his rookie year, where Carlsson would only play roughly two games a week and go through intensive strength-building workouts on nights when did not play.

However, that was before Sennecke’s sterling start.

Sennecke played in six of the seven preseason games and has played in all five regular season games. Despite a maintenance day last Wednesday where he was held out of practice due to a “minor lower-body ailment,” Sennecke has been ready to go for every team activity, and it seems like his destination is in his hands.

“I think he’ll tell us how that’s all going to play out,” Quenneville said last week. “He’s a big kid. He’s a strong kid. We’ll see how he handles it. I don’t know how much ice time on a game to game basis. I say he’s going to be at the numbers he’s playing at right now. I think we’re probably playing our top guys offensively a little bit more in those games. Every game’s different, but I don’t expect him playing close to 19 minutes on a game to game basis, but we’ll see. He’ll tell us.”

Well, so far, Sennecke is playing close to 19 minutes a game, but will that hold up over the course of an 82-game season? Again, that’s seemingly in Sennecke’s hands.

Even with the nine-game threshold looming at the end of the road trip, Quenneville said the plan “right now” is for him to be in the NHL all season. (If a player on his entry-level contract–like Sennecke–plays 10 NHL games, it burns the first year off that three-year deal and starts the clock toward free agency.)

However, there is the possibility that the 19-year-old does hit a wall at some point. Including playoffs, Sennecke has played over 70 games at the junior level each of the last two seasons, but that’s not the same rigor of 82 NHL games.

If he does hit some sort of physicality wall before December, could Sennecke leave the Ducks to finally experience the World Junior Championships with Team Canada? Could Sennecke, like Seattle’s Shane Wright in 2022, take that World Junior path and finish his regular season back in OHL Oshawa? Could the decision be taken out of Sennecke’s hands once Strome is back in the line-up and the combinations must be adjusted?

With the early returns, it seems unlikely. 

Like with every game so far this season, the puck is on Sennecke’s stick, and it’s up to him to keep shooting.