Joshua Jackson reunites with ‘Mighty Ducks’ costar at 2025 NHL Draft

Joshua Jackson knew how to dress for his big gig announcing the Anaheim Ducks’ first-round picks in the 2025 NHL Draft on Friday: in an orange jersey with a familiar avian logo on the front and “Conway” in all caps on the back of it.

“It’s been a while since I wore 96, so it’s nice to have back on,” the star of The Mighty Ducks said on NHL Tonight.

Jackson, who played team member Charlie Conway in the original 1992 hockey comedy, the 1994 sequel D2: The Mighty Ducks, and 1996’s D3: The Mighty Ducks, joined his costar Marguerite Moreau, who portrayed skilled player Connie Moreau, in announcing center Roger McQueen as the Anaheim Ducks’ first draft pick this week, making McQueen the 10th player selected overall. 

The success of the first Mighty Ducks film led the Walt Disney Company to launch the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, an NHL expansion team, in 1993. Its name was changed to the Anaheim Ducks in 2005, when Disney sold the franchise.

As a 13-year-old filming the original movie, Jackson, now 47, never imagined how long the hockey franchise’s legs would be, he told NHL Tonight hosts E.J. Hradek and Alexa Landestoy at the event.

“I don’t think really any of us knew what we were doing and couldn’t possibly have even dreamed that this would be a possibility all these years later,” Jackson said, gesturing toward the crowd assembled behind him at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, where the 2025 NHL Draft took place.

Before the draft got underway, Jackson joked with Hradek and Landestoy that none of the players about to be drafted had been born when the original film came out. “Literally every single one of them,” he said with a laugh. “Some of their parents weren’t even born by the time we made the Mighty Ducks movies.”

Indeed, 18-year-old McQueen was born in 2006, a decade after the third film in the series was released. The trilogy also starred Emilio Estevez as lawyer Gordon Bombay, who coaches the young hockey team through their misadventures.

The franchise expanded into television, first getting the short-lived adaptation Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series in 1996, and then, in 2021, the two-season live-action Disney+ show The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers. Moreau appeared in an episode of the latter series; Jackson did not show up in it.

The Dawson’s Creek star, who hails from Vancouver, said hockey has always been part of his life. “I’m enough of a fan that there’s been a couple times I’ve been allowed to be around the [Stanley] Cup,” he said on NHL Tonight, “and until I reached my 30s, still wouldn’t touch it, just in case.”

Jackson told Hradek and Landestoy that he used to dream of being announced as a member of the NHL Draft, not doing the announcing. “But I’m okay with it now,” he said. “I’ve recognized that this is my role.”

He seemed more than okay, actually. Jackson called it a gift to be involved in such a monumental day in a young player’s life.

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“To be a part of making somebody’s dream come true, you just don’t get that opportunity very often in your life,” he said. “And to come full circle wearing the jersey, it feels pretty good. To have my small brick in the wall of the legacy of the game is amazing.”

Moreau recently appeared in four episodes of Max’s acclaimed hit medical drama The Pitt.

Jackson’s soapier medical drama, Doctor Odyssey, which was set aboard a cruise ship, was just canceled at ABC after one season following a lawsuit filed by three members of the props crew against parent company Disney and producer 20th Television. The suit alleges sexual harassment, retaliation, wrongful termination, and negligent hiring, retention, and supervising practices.