The Ducks today selected right winger Nikita Klepov with the 15th overall pick of the NHL Draft. \u00a0The 17-year-old Klepov (who turns 18 tomorrow), led the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) in scoring in 2025-26 as a rookie with the Saginaw Spirit, recording 37-60=97 points with a +9 rating in 67 games to earn the OHL\u2019s Rookie of the Year award and was named to the OHL First All-Star Team.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the day, the Ducks acquired the 15th and 29th overall picks from the St. Louis Blues in exchange for forward Mason\u00a0McTavish.<\/p>\n
Klepov became third player in OHL history to win both rookie of the year lead the league in points in the same season, joining Patrick Kane (2006-07) and Jack Valiquette (1973-74). He is also the first American-born player to win the Eddie Powers Memorial Trophy as the OHL\u2019s top scorer since Jason Robertson in 2018-19<\/p>\n
The 6-0, 186-pound forward led all\u00a0OHL rookies in points, goals and assists last season, and set a Saginaw record for the most assists and points in a season by a rookie. He also led Saginaw with 1-4=5 points in four OHL Playoff contests last season.<\/p>\n
Klepov spent the majority of the 2024-25 season with the Sioux City Musketeers of the USHL, earning 12-19=31 points and three game-winning goals in 59 contests. He became the third Sioux City rookie since 2002-03 to score three game-winning goals in a season.<\/p>\n
The Deerfield Beach, Fla. native led Team USA to a gold medal at the 2025 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, scoring the championship-clinching goal while scoring 1-5=6 points in five tournament games. Klepov is committed to Michigan State University for the 2026-27 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Ducks today selected right winger Nikita Klepov with the 15th overall pick of the NHL Draft. \u00a0The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-376821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}