{"id":437672,"date":"2026-08-19T21:50:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T21:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/437672\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T21:50:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T21:50:35","slug":"ducks-acquire-cruz-lucius-from-penguins-pro-hockey-rumors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/437672\/","title":{"rendered":"Ducks Acquire Cruz Lucius From Penguins \u2013 Pro Hockey Rumors"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Anaheim Ducks have taken advantage of a bad situation for the Pittsburgh Penguins. According to a team announcement<\/a>, the Ducks have acquired forward prospect Cruz Lucius<\/a> from the Penguins in exchange for future considerations.<\/p>\n

Lucius, 22, was one of a handful of collegiate prospects set to enter unrestricted free agency<\/a> on August 15th. It was well known for some time that Lucius would be one of the several to have their signing rights expire, as he informed<\/a> Pittsburgh in early April that he would not sign an entry-level contract with them.<\/p>\n

General Manager of the Penguins, Kyle Dubas<\/a>, was quoted at the time, saying, \u201c(Lucius and his agent) informed us that that he was not going to be signing in Pittsburgh for a few reasons that\u2019s up to him to share. It\u2019s a personal thing for him. We felt we had a great opportunity for him, and the proof is in the pudding on the development side, but players are entitled to make their decision, and I don\u2019t think we\u2019re at the position here anymore where we have to beg people to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly to the situation with Stiven Sardarian<\/a> and the Buffalo Sabres, Lucius never filed his NCAA departure paperwork with the NHL Central Registry, likely because he knew the Penguins were nearing a trade. Now, Anaheim will hold his rights indefinitely. Should Lucius file his departure paperwork in the next few days, the Ducks would then have 30 days to sign him to a professional contract of some kind.<\/p>\n

Lucius is an intriguing prospect for a few reasons. Drafted 124th overall by the Penguins in the 2022 NHL Draft, he lacks significant draft pedigree but has achieved considerable success in the NCAA.<\/p>\n

He initially began his collegiate tenure at the University of Wisconsin. In his first two seasons with the Badgers, Lucius scored 24 goals and 68 points in 70 games with a -7 rating. Likely influenced by the dismissal of Head Coach Tony Granato<\/a> after the 2022-23 season, Lucius transferred to Arizona State University for his junior and senior seasons.<\/p>\n

Outside of some injury concerns in his first season, Lucius\u2019 tenure with the Sun Devils was largely a success. In his final season, the Lawrence, KS native registered 15 goals and 46 points in 36 games with a +1 rating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Anaheim Ducks have taken advantage of a bad situation for the Pittsburgh Penguins. According to a team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":437673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,824,165,164,173641,46268,1603,2722],"class_list":["post-437672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-ducks","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-cruz-lucius","tag-newsstand","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-transactions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437672","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=437672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}