Maybe all of the NHL's general managers just really, really like their teams as they were currently constructed entering trade deadline day. Or maybe some of them just had ridiculous asking prices and made trades impossible. Whatever the reason, the NHL trade deadline came and went on Monday afternoon with only a handful of small deals as the day ended up being more about the trades that didn't get made (Jonathan Drouin, Loui Eriksson, Dan Hamhuis) than ones that did get made.
The combination of most of the bigger deals getting made in advance of the deadline, as well as teams apparently not getting the value they wanted in trade talks resulted in one of the quietest trade deadlines in recent memory. But when you add in the deals that were made in the days and weeks before Monday, a lot of teams did end up changing as we prepare to enter the stretch run of the 2015-16 NHL season.
So who ended up doing the most to help themselves, and who ended up on the losing end? Let's take a look.
Winners
Having already won three Stanley Cups in six years the Chicago Blackhawks are looking to add another title to their collection, and they took some big steps toward doing that this past week by adding Andrew Ladd, Dale Weise, Tomas Fleischmann and Christian Ehrhoff to an already loaded roster.
It was more strong work from general manager Stan Bowman as he continued to shuffle draft picks, prospects and cap space to keep adding to a team that is already one of the best in the NHL.
The names and faces keep changing after every championship, but the end result is always the same.
With the most recent round of additions the Blackhawks have a lineup that should go four lines deep and be a matchup problem for any team that has to face them in the playoffs.
Nothing is guaranteed in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and a lot of times it comes down to getting the right matchup, getting the right call or the right bounce at the right time, or just simply staying healthy. All you can do as a GM is give yourself the best possible chance to win, and Bowman has once again done exactly that for the Blackhawks,
No, Eric Staal is not the player he used to be. And yes, the Rangers continued to trade away draft picks and prospects, something that is eventually going to come back and bite them when their Stanley Cup window slams shut. But this particular trade didn’t completely send them over the edge when it comes to giving away their future. They were already going to be in that position whether they gave away another future second-round pick or not. The bottom line is this is a team that still has a shot to win this year and Staal is going to help them do that.
The Rangers know what their future looks like when it comes to the salary cap, draft picks and upcoming free agents, and they know that Henrik Lundqvist only has so many years of top-shelf play left. If they don’t do it now, it’s not going to happen for a long, long time. They pretty much have to go for it and given the success rate of draft picks and prospects traded at the deadline it is quite possible they will get more out of Staal, even if it’s just for a few months, than they would have for anything they gave up in the trade with Carolina.
The other big move for the Rangers was the deal they didn’t make by keeping Keith Yandle. He is the only true puck-moving presence on their blue line.
The Florida Panthers were buyers. Major buyers. They were one of the most active teams leading up to the deadline by adding Teddy Purcell, Jiri Hudler and Jakub Kindl for a bunch of draft picks. Even though they ended up getting another pick back in another deal for Brandon Pirri, they now own fewer draft picks over the next couple of years than any other team in the league. That is costly in the long-run, but if there is a team in the league that can afford to give up those picks right now it just might be Florida because a lot of their young core is already place with Aleksander Barkov, Jonathan Huberdeau, Nick Bjugstad, Vincent Trocheck and Aaron Ekblad on the roster.
They also have a very limited window to try and win with veterans like Jaromir Jagr, Roberto Luongo and Brian Campbell, and they are clearly trying to make a run at it this season.
By adding Hudler and Purcell they brought some nice scoring depth to a team that had, at times, been pretty top-heavy this season and relied too much on the Jagr-Barkov-Huberdeau trio to provide the goals. Now their lineup is a little more balanced.
Are they a top team like Chicago or Washington? No. But other than the Capitals there probably isn't another team in the Eastern Conference that they shouldn't be at least somewhat comfortable going up against in the playoffs. And if they can maintain that spot at the top of the Atlantic Division, they wouldn't need to face the Capitals until the Eastern Conference Final. They probably didn't expect to be in a position to add this many players this season, but sometimes you have to adjust on the fly when your team exceeds expectations.
It wasn’t the biggest trade of the day, but getting Brandon Pirri from the Florida Panthers for only a sixth-round draft pick is a potentially big score for a Ducks team that is starting to once again establish itself as a contender in the West. Pirri has only played in 101 games since the start of the 2014-15 season but he has scored 33 goals in those games. That is top-line production. Among players that have appeared in at least 100 games during that stretch his 0.33 mark is among the top-30 of all players in the NHL. And the Ducks picked him up for almost nothing.
The Panthers were probably pressured to do something given the combination of needing roster spots for all of the players they added over the past week and the fact he is due for a pretty big raise after this season as a restricted free agent.
Fortunately for the Ducks, they were able to take advantage of that.
They also added Jamie McGinn from the Buffalo Sabres after trading Patrick Maroon to the Edmonton Oilers.
Losers
The Kings are still one of the top Stanley Cup contenders in the Western Conference, but the trade deadline was not great for them.
They could have used some additional depth on defense and only came away with Rob Scuderi. Yeah, they won a Stanley Cup with him before, but two teams (Pittsburgh and Chicago) have already decided this season that he was pretty much an unplayable liability in their lineup. At his best in the NHL he was a solid stay-at-home defenseman that could play a sound, responsible game in his own end. Those days are not only gone for him on an individual level, but also for that type of defenseman in the league when it comes to being a key asset for a winning team. Today’s game is about puck-movement, skating, and clearing the zone. Scuderi is not going to help in any of those areas.
They picked up Kris Versteeg to fill a spot up front, and he is a decent addition, but it is a pretty underwhelming addition when you consider their top competition in the Western Conference — Chicago — was able to pick up Andrew Ladd.
Dean Lombardi has made some huge pre-deadline trades in recent years to help lift his team to a Cup (Jeff Carter in 2012 and Marian Gaborik in 2014) but he probably did not find that trade this year.
They needed to upgrade their defense, this was obvious to pretty much anybody that has watched them play this season or has any kind of access to an NHL stats page. This is, quite simply, a bad defensive team.
They did end up adding a defenseman when they picked up Kris Russell from the Calgary Flames. The problem is Russell probably isn’t the type of defenseman they needed and he doesn’t really do much to upgrade the position. He blocks a lot of shots, but that is mostly because his team is always stuck defending when he is on the ice.
And that doesn’t even get into the fact that they paid an enormous price to get him, giving up two prospects and a second-round draft pick that could turn into a first-round pick depending on how far the Stars go in the postseason.
What in the world happened here?
They are not only out of playoff contention, but they ended up keeping Dan Hamhuis and Radim Vrbata, two players that are unrestricted free agents after this season and almost certainly had some sort of a market around the NHL.
Hamhuis' no-trade clause certainly factored into this as far as he is concerned because he seemed to have little interest in going anywhere too far East. There is only so much you can do in that situation when you're the team, but not being able to move either him or Vrbata has to be frustrating for Canucks fans as they sit through what looks to be a lost season as their core players (Henrik and Daniel Sedin, Alex Edler, Alex Burrows) all get another year older.
Jonathan Drouin
Well this has certainly backfired for him, hasn't it?
The Tampa Bay Lightning did not move the talented young forward before Monday's deadline, meaning that the stalemate between him and the team will continue for the foreseeable future.
Drouin, unhappy with his role in Tampa Bay, is currently suspended by the team after he asked for a trade following a demotion to the American Hockey League and stopped playing for the squad.
It seemed at times as if a deal was going to be close, but to this point nothing has worked out and the Lightning have seemingly called his bluff. He is now faced with a major decision: Either keep waiting around for the Lightning to trade him, or try to work things out with the Lightning and get back to playing hockey.
He is still a promising prospect with top-line potential, but nobody is gaining anything by him continuing to sit out and not play.
It is possible that the Lightning could still trade him this season even though the trade deadline has passed (he would not be eligible to play in the NHL playoffs if he did by some small chance get move), but that seems unlikely. What is likely is that this carries on over to the offseason and perhaps the NHL draft which seems to be the next big date for a potential trade.
Yzerman said it is still possible that Drouin could come back to the team, but at this point the damage may have already been done.