The trade deadline comes around February 25, at 3pm Eastern Time. Each team has two and a half months to prepare their shopping lists. Here’s a look at what each team is looking for.
The NHL season is in high gear, and the standings as we know them are beginning to take shape. Expert predictions have been made, and needless to say, many people were wrong about many teams, in many different directions. Such is life in the NHL.
With these trends coming into play over the course of the season, teams begin to identify their strategy moving forward in terms of what’s best for their particular franchise as the season dictates their direction to be.
There exists a simple dichotomy of types of teams come deadline time: buyers and sellers. Buyers are typically looking for rental type players who will help the team win now, and give that team the best chance to win the Cup. Sellers have those players and are looking for future assets such as prospects or draft picks. A team can also obviously stand pat and not move anyone. There will be a few of those.
So, we will take a deep dive into each team, and we can try and determine the direction of that team come the trade deadline. We will identify players to look out for going forward, and try and make some sense out of what could happen months from now.
Things can definitely change, as this primer is very premature. There are months in between now and the deadline, so things can alter dramatically. These are just guesses as if to assume that the standings will remain relatively similar to where we are now.
All contract situations, cap space figures, and draft pick ownerships are being sourced from CapFriendly.com. In terms of draft picks, every pick mentioned is original to that team, unless otherwise noted.