The NHL’s old guard finds itself broke ahead of critical trade deadline

With less than two months until the 2024 NHL Trade Deadline March 8, we’re delivering at least one deadline-focused story every day at Daily Faceoff.

Today, we look at a changing of the guard in the buyer’s landscape. With several contenders burning up their assets in major deals last year, will a new group of powerhouses make the biggest trade splashes this winter?

2024 NHL Trade Deadline Countdown: 45 days

Hockey is unique among the major North American sports in that anywhere from 10 to 12 teams go into the trade deadline believing they have a real shot of going all the way. In baseball, there are only a dozen playoff berths to offer, let alone contenders. In American football, a single Wildcard team has won the Super Bowl since 2010. As for basketball, superteams have allowed for very few surprises.

In the Stanley Cup Playoffs, though, a hot goalie and a loaded top six are enough to build a contender; every season between January and March, GMs line up to ensure their rosters hit those benchmarks come hell or high water. First-round picks turn into 20-game rentals, and prospects into third-line or second-pair veterans. And why not? No one dwells on the fact the St. Louis Blues spent a potential franchise player in Tage Thompson to win their lone Stanley Cup in 2019, as they would never have gotten over that hump without acquiring eventual Conn Smythe-winner Ryan O’Reilly.

That reasoning worked for the Blues (who now suffer the hangover of years of fast-and-loose deals), but for every O’Reilly, there are a thousand Dmitry Orlovs. Orlov is a fine player with a Cup of his own, but his trade to the Boston Bruins last season is already forgettable without a deep postseason run to show for it. The Washington Capitals netted three picks in the first three rounds for the Russian and agitator Garnet Hathaway; the B’s, who could never have afforded to re-sign either player, walked away with nothing.

The Orlov trade is not a cautionary tale, merely the most recent example of the conventional wisdom of NHL executives: a chance at the Stanley Cup in the here and now is more precious than abstract future assets, no matter how valuable. The teams that have been good enough long enough to live on that razor’s edge for multiple seasons are finally starting to suffer for it, and that transforms the NHL’s trade landscape ahead of a 2024 deadline loaded with available talent.

The Bruins, in particular, are surviving on their typical model of goaltending, defense, and David Pastrnak but need help at center, where Pavel Zacha, Charlie Coyle, and Morgan Geekie make up their spine. All three are solid middle-sixers, but the two-way sensibility of Calgary’s Elias Lindholm could bring this already first-placed outfit to a boil. He would be the perfect David Krejci redux if Boston had not already spent their first three picks in this year’s draft on Tyler Bertuzzi, Hampus Lindholm, and Orlov. Only Lindholm established himself as a long-term solution, and Boston now has nothing to offer a Flames team eager to hit the reset button.

The Tampa Bay Lightning are seemingly in the dying days of their dynasty and similarly tapped out. Their defense was off to a dreadful start before Mikhail Sergachev went down injured, and they cannot afford the likes of Calgary’s Noah Hanifin or Chris Tanev against the cap, let alone in assets. Nick Seeler, whose +17 rating is ninth among defensemen, is excelling in second-pair minutes for the Philadelphia Flyers on a near-minimum salary. Can Tampa convince Daniel Briere to sell a character guy from a team solidly in the Eastern Conference playoff picture? It’s easier said than done after GM Julien BriseBois bizarrely leveraged five draft picks for scrapper Tanner Jeannot at last year’s deadline.     

The Lightning and Bruins aren’t the only established contenders that spent all their wiggle room only to fall short last year. The New York Rangers are relying heavily on veteran minimum pickups Erik Gustaffson, Jonathan Quick, and Blake Wheeler, who clear 100 in combined age with room to spare; they would likely need to take a knee on Kaapo Kaako’s development to net a contributor in his prime after whiffing on twin rentals Patrick Kane and Vladimir Tarasenko last season.    

The Edmonton Oilers spent every last shred of their trade capability on Mattias Ekholm in 2023. The veteran blueliner has been a hit in Alberta, but are Corey Perry and Stuart Skinner enough to solve their long-running issues in the goaltending and depth-scoring departments? They need to be; Edmonton is out of room to improve unless it moves money out to bring money in.

On his arrival in Pittsburgh, Kyle Dubas made every possible improvement on the husk of the Penguins’ Cup teams by acquiring Erik Karlsson and Reilly Smith for (relatively) cheap and signing Ryan Graves. He can do little more for the middling Pens, whose cap and prospect outlooks are equally dire.

None of this is to say that Lindholm and Tanev will not switch teams or that the ridiculous hauls brought in by Ekholm and Jeannot won’t inflate their price tags. It means new and exciting teams will jump in line to get them.

The Carolina Hurricanes own several expiring deals and have been uncharacteristically urgent lately. The Winnipeg Jets are 18-2-2 since Dec. 1 but must know they can only keep the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche down for so long. The Pacific-leading Vancouver Canucks would have little trouble finding a taker for Andrei Kuzmenko’s $5.5-million cap hit and continuing their aggressive trade policy.

The Bruins, the Rangers, and any other team that took its moonshot over the past few seasons will finally foot the bill in 2024. If they are to win the Stanley Cup, it won’t be because they brought in a host of former All-Stars at the eleventh hour; this season, the NHL’s blue bloods must go it alone.