Winners and Losers from the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline
The NHL Trade Deadline was a wild ride this year for the Panthers and for the rest of the league. A couple of teams made out better than others this year though...
The Florida Panthers, in contrast to last season, were quite active at the trade deadline, acquiring top-nine winger Vladimir Tarasenko from the Ottawa Senators in exchange for some mid-round picks and veteran leader (and also an effective shutdown forward) Kyle Okposo from the Buffalo Sabres for minor league defenseman Calle Sjalin and a 7th round pick, while also claiming 22-year-old defenseman Tobias Bjornfot off of waivers from the Vegas Golden Knights. GM Bill Zito made some quality additions to the team’s depth and the Panthers, who are leading the NHL as of the writing of this piece, are beefing up to make another run at the Stanley Cup with the hopes of going one step further than they did in the 2022-23 season. They weren’t the only active team at the deadline though and plenty other teams made moves to make their push for the 2024 Stanley Cup. Some teams, including Florida, made some brilliant moves and others missed the mark at this deadline; the contenders have loaded up and the playoffs in both conferences are looking to be extremely competitive. Here are some of the winners and losers from the 2024 NHL trade deadline.
Winner: Vegas Golden Knights
Lady Luck is letting the dice stay hot in Las Vegas. Mark Stone’s injury opened up some LTIR money for Vegas to go big-game hunting at the deadline this year and GM Kelly McCrimmon absolutely nailed this deadline. The opening salvo was the acquisition of Anthony Mantha for a 2nd and a 4th round pick, adding a very capable winger who plays with a great blend of size and skill, a perfect depth addition for Vegas. They then upped the ante by acquiring top-pairing defenseman Noah Hanifin from Calgary (more on them later) in exchange for Daniil Miromanov, a 2026 1st round pick and a 3rd round pick. Hanifin makes an already deep blue line even deeper for Vegas and his two-way style of play should mesh perfectly with a defensive core already stacked with talent like Alex Pietrangelo and Shea Theodore. Lastly, the Big One, the trade that stunned the hockey world, happened: the acquisition of Tomas Hertl from San Jose (also a team that will be mentioned later) for only prospect center David Edstrom and a 1st round pick. Hertl is a bonafide top six center who has managed to put up points on some awful San Jose teams and should make an already loaded top six even deeper once he returns from knee surgery some time during the regular season. Despite Vegas having cooled off in recent months, falling into one of the West’s wild card spots, they remained aggressive at the deadline and leveraged their lucky LTIR cap to acquire some huge pieces and add to a team that could very well once again be the class of the Western Conference.
Loser: Calgary Flames
If Vegas was the big winner at this deadline, then Calgary was the big loser. Their trade for Elias Lindholm was solid, getting a first round pick and a decent defensive prospect in Hunter Brzustewicz as well as Andrei Kuzmenko, who became a contributor to the team almost immediately. However, that’s where the good news ends. They had the top defenseman on the market in Chris Tanev, a shutdown shot blocking monster who plays the exact type of “playoff-style” hockey that teams always go all-out to get at the trade deadline and proceeded to get no top prospects and no first round picks for him. Dallas got him for Artem Grushnikov (a physical defensive prospect who doesn’t seem to have very much potential and at the fringes of the Stars’ list of top prospects if he was even on the list) and some draft picks, the highest being in the 2nd round. Any other team selling defensemen probably should have sent Craig Conroy some strongly worded letters after that trade since it basically depressed the defense market at this deadline. If the Tanev trade made other sellers upset, then the later Hanifin trade made them absolutely irate: the aforementioned Hanifin was shipped to Vegas for a 25-year-old AHL defenseman in Miromanov and a 1st round pick in two whole years. Calgary may have been in a difficult position, but they sold way too low on their key guys and clearly did not properly leverage the market to get the best assets for their rentals and if GM Craig Conroy hopes that a minor trade for another physical young defenseman, Nikita Okhotiuk, is enough to change my opinion of his work at this deadline, then he is sorely mistaken.
Winner: Nashville Predators
The Nashville Predators have been a bit of a surprise this season. Not many people had them making the playoffs after trading away Ryan Johansen and buying out Matt Duchene in the summer and spending most of their free agency money on ‘culture’ signings like Ryan O’Reilly and Luke Schenn. However, they’ve remained competitive in a tough Central division and have made themselves at home in a wild card spot out West. Preds GM Barry Trotz, not long after calling trade deadline prices “ridiculous”, ended up making some minor depth buys at the deadline for some not ridiculous, very reasonable prices. They did make one minor sell, sending fourth line defensive forward Yakov Trenin to Colorado for prospect Jeremy Hanzel and a 3rd round pick in a deal that gave Nashville a young player and an asset to help out their retool in exchange for someone that probably was going to leave in the summer anyways. After that, Trotz acquired Anthony Beauvilier and Jason Zucker from Chicago and Arizona respectively for a 4th and a 6th round pick. Two quality depth forwards (the former of whom thrived under Trotz during their time with the New York Islanders) were added to a team making a playoff push with barely any sacrifice of the future made in doing so. To me, that’s a solid bit of work. Trotz added on to these moves with a minor swap with Philadelphia, acquiring energetic and hard-working fourth liner Wade Allison in exchange for Denis Gurianov, who was not a good fit in Nashville (only 2 points in 14 games). Nashville could be a tough out for whoever ends up facing them in the playoffs should they hold on to their spot and these moves help make Nashville more of an upset candidate in the upcoming playoffs.
Loser: Toronto Maple Leafs/Boston Bruins
I’m combining the Leafs and Bruins (who very well may face each other in the first round yet again) into one designation for one simple reason: I feel that both teams failed to truly get better or address their issues at this deadline. For both teams, a lot of that is due to the salary cap constraints that they have to deal, but it’s hard not to notice that teams around them in the East bulked up and made moves, while their moves didn’t move many needles. Toronto looked to add depth to their blue line and acquired Ilya Lyubushkin (again, this time from Anaheim) and 2019 Stanley Cup champion Joel Edmundson. Neither of them add much to Toronto’s blue line in my opinion, and while Edmundson can still play that physical style that is conducive to playoff success despite his advanced age and declining abilities, he has been awful for the past few seasons and clearly has lost a lot of the abilities that made him so key for St. Louis’ championship five years ago and Lyubushkin was absolutely bullied by Tampa Bay in the one playoff series he ever played in in his career and adds next to nothing to a playoff caliber blue line apart from a warm body. They also added fourth liner Connor Dewar from Minnesota, which does give them a little bit more energy, but doesn’t add much of anything to an offense that struggles to score if the Core 4 are off their game. For the Bruins, their main issue was a lack of center depth once Matthew Poitras went down for the season with an injury and they failed to acquire any centers. They allegedly tried to make a move for Los Angeles’ Pierre-Luc Dubois, but Linus Ullmark used his modified No Trade Clause to scuttle the deal. Once that failed, their only additions were bottom-six gritty forward Pat Maroon (who’s fallen on some hard times after his three consecutive cups with St. Louis and Tampa) and third-pairing physical defenseman Andrew Peeke (who comes with a bad contract and who has been awful for the past few years in Columbus). While neither team gave up an incredible amount of assets to make these moves and while both teams are tougher to play against as a result, I find it difficult to say that both teams truly got better, especially considering teams like the Panthers, Lightning, Rangers, and Hurricanes all made big moves to get a lot better while the Leafs and Bruins were stuck trying to improve on the margins and not able to truly address their issues.
Winner: Colorado Avalanche
While Vegas stole a lot of the headlines at this deadline, Colorado’s work deserves recognition in its own right. Colorado had an obvious issue down the middle and they took some big swings to improve in that area; they traded former 4th overall pick Bowen Byram to Buffalo in a 1-for-1 deal that netted them Casey Mittelstadt, an extremely talented and relatively young center who immediately slots in on their second line and replaces the misfiring Ryan Johansen. Speaking of Johansen, he got sent packing to Philadelphia with a first round pick to acquire defenseman Sean Walker, who immedaitely replaces the departing Byram and keeps Colorado’s defensive core as a strength of the team. Getting rid of Johansen and his $4 million cap hit also gave the team some more flexibility for this upcoming summer and got them out of a deal that was not working out for any of the parties involved. With their big moves done, Colorado also added Yakov Trenin from Nashville and Brandon Duhaime from Minnesota to their bottom six, adding size, defensive play, and physicality to a forward group that has looked thin depth-wise at certain points throughout the season. They improved their forward depth without sacrificing their defense and the only significant future piece that they gave up was the 2025 1st round pick in the Walker deal. Colorado probably could have done well to add one more goalie to spell Alex Georgiev (who has played 51 of the team’s 64 games), but since that wasn’t as urgent of a need given that Justus Annunen’s performance as the team’s backup has been solid in his limited games, I can give them a pass on not dipping into the goalie market at this deadline. All in all, GM Chris MacFarland did great work at this deadline and Colorado looks to be a team that will once again challenge to be the best of the West.
Loser: San Jose Sharks
San Jose tried to give Calgary a run for their money in the Bad Performance at the Trade Deadline department and it really shows. It didn’t start out terribly as they acquired a fine-to-decent prospect in defenseman Jack Thompson and a 3rd round pick from Tampa Bay for Anthony Duclair, a rental with 16 goals in 56 games in the Bay Area. If anything, that was actually a very good trade for San Jose. After that it starts getting… confusing. Depth defenseman Radim Simek was sent packing to Detroit in exchange for Klim Kostin, a young power forward whose game has completely failed to translate to North America (this would also be his fourth NHL team in five seasons) and Nikita Okhotiuk, a physical prospect defenseman acquired last year as part of the Timo Meier trade, was sent to Calgary for a 5th round pick. They then sent Kaapo Kahkonen, who has had a solid season in San Jose given the circumstances to New Jersey for Vitek Vanecek (who has been terrible and only helps San Jose in their pursuit of presumptive 2024 first overall pick Macklin Celebrini) and only a 7th round pick. These latter three moves were perplexing to say the least, but excusable as they didn’t really get robbed on any of them despite none of the trades really looking like they would do much to help GM Mike Grier’s rebuilding efforts. Then came the Tomas Hertl deal, where the team got absolutely robbed by the Vegas Golden Knights as they only acquired one prospect, David Edstrom, and one first rounder (that likely ends up in the 20’s unless Vegas collapses in 2024-25), retained a portion of Hertl’s contract for another six years and GAVE Vegas two third round picks as part of the deal. Not only is this terrible asset management, but this also completely ruins San Jose’s ability to broker trades or do what teams like Arizona have done (sign a guy in free agency and then trade him at 50% salary retention to a contender) to help their rebuild since all three of their retained salary slots are now occupied until 2025 and they’ll only have one free slot between 2025 and 2027. This is a huge hindrance to their rebuild and keeps them from accruing more prospects and assets to help out with these rebuilding plans. They also failed to move out pending UFAs Kevin Labanc, Mike Hoffman, and Alex Barabanov despite rumors that all three were available and/or drawing interest in the week before the deadline. San Jose simply did not get enough assets back to aid their rebuilding efforts, got badly taken advantage on a trade for arguably their best player, and have handcuffed their abilities to aid their rebuild for at least another two years. Unless Mike Grier hits on the draft picks that he has, it’s going to be a long and dark decade in the Bay Area.
Winner: Carolina Hurricanes
Probably the team that did the best business at the trade deadline in the East (Florida did really well and is a close second though), the Carolina Hurricanes did something that they haven’t really done since their big organizational changes in 2018, they paid handsomely for a rental. Jake Guentzel was arguably the biggest piece available at this deadline and Carolina was the team that swooped in and poached him away from Pittsburgh. It did cost them a fair bit of assets as roster player Michael Bunting, who was alright but was far from a perfect fit in Raleigh as well as three B-tier (at worst) prospects had to go the other way, but the Hurricanes retained some of their blue-chippers like Alexander Nikishin, Scott Morrow, and Bradly Nadeau and the prospects that they gave up (Ville Koivunen, Vasili Ponomarev, and Cruz Lucius) are talented but are far from critical to the future of the franchise. The Canes added a superstar forward without decimating their prospect pipeline or their forward depth; they don’t even have to send a first round pick to Pittsburgh unless they make the Stanley Cup Finals. They also added veteran center Evgeny Kuznetsov, who wanted a change of scenery out of Washington and only had to give up a third round pick to get him. While Kuznetsov isn’t what he was in his prime, he does have experience as a key piece for a championship team thanks to his time with the Capitals in 2018 and can still be a very valuable contributor to a team. Carolina’s issue last year was that they couldn’t score and didn’t have a true superstar that could get them a goal when they needed one; Guentzel provides that immediately and Kuznetsov provides some playoff experience and some offensive flair and ability that could prove crucial in a playoff dogfight against the class of the Eastern Conference like the Panthers or Rangers.
Loser: New York Islanders
The New York Islanders are in a dogfight for a playoff spot in a dense Eastern Conference, yet remained silent at the trade deadline while their main competition for the last Wild Card spot, Tampa Bay, made moves to push for the spot. The Islanders seem to hope that Patrick Roy, who was hired as head coach to replace the ailing Lane Lambert about a month ago, turns the team he inherited around enough to get to the playoffs and that the “new coach bump” rather than additions at the deadline prove to be the difference maker. Isles GM Lou Lamoriello is known for being quiet on Trade Deadline day as this is the fourth consecutive year he hasn’t made a trade on Deadline Day. He also insisted that the team was not going to sell this year, and seemed to hope that the strategy that worked for the Florida Panthers last year, completely stand pat and have faith in the guys in the room, also works for this year’s Islanders. However, the Islanders’ main rivals in the wild card race, the Lightning, Red Wings, and Flyers, all added some pieces at the deadline even if they were minor depth adds like Anthony Duclair (Tampa Bay), Radim Simek (Detroit), or Erik Johnson (Philadelphia). Lamoriello’s strategy of ‘Stand Pat and Trust the Room’ puts the Islanders in a bit of a difficult spot in the playoff chase as they have to watch the teams around them get stronger while they have to hope that they can pull some magic out of the hat in order to get in. The Islanders could have used some extra forward depth at this deadline and maybe an extra piece on defense, yet they proceeded to get nobody. While that strategy did work for the Florida Panthers last year, it looks like the Islanders are bringing a knife to the gunfight for the last wild card spot in the Eastern Conference. They had a chance to get some extra depth and they didn’t take it while their rivals did. If they do miss the playoffs, it will be hard not to look at their lack of action at the deadline and say that their failure to add while their rivals bolstered their depth was what did them in in the playoff race.
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