The biggest NHL trades do not happen before the trade deadline. They happen at the NHL draft when all 30 general managers are in one place, have a chance to deal with one another face to face, and have an incentive -- the draft itself -- to be aggressive when it comes to making moves.
Most of that action will probably take place on the draft floor on Friday night in Buffalo, so let's take a look at some of the players that could be on the move during the 2016 NHL draft.
The defenseman that should draw the most interest this weekend is St. Louis Blues defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk.
He also might be the most attractive player on the market that actually has a realistic chance of being traded.
His name has been mentioned in trade talks for about a year now, mostly because of his contract situation as he enters the final year of his current deal and the Blues likely not being able to -- or not wanting to -- re-sign him at his market price.
Obviously, there are a lot of teams that can use a 22-minute per night, 45-point, possession driving defenseman and the Blues should be able to cash in if they do move him. The New York Rangers, if they can make the money work, have a desperate need for a player like Shattenkirk, as do the Boston Bruins (they have a desperate need for anybody that can play defense, actually).
If a team like Buffalo is going to go all in on adding a veteran defenseman this offseason they might be better off going for Shattenkirk over a player like Anaheim's Cam Fowler (more on him in a bit). The contract situation is a little more complicated, but Buffalo has both the salary cap space and the deep pockets to get him signed, and he is simply a better player.
Common sense says the Montreal Canadiens will not trade P.K. Subban because he is one of their best players, one of the best players in the league, and players like him do not typically get traded unless they demand it.
But because he has a no-trade clause that kicks in on July 1 teams have apparently been calling Montreal over the past few days in an effort to see if the Canadiens want to take advantage of that window and the rumor mill started to go crazy over the previous 48 hours so we should probably at least address it.
General manager Marc Bergevin has not come out and said he absolutely will not trade Subban, but the chances of this actually happening seem to be close to zero simply because nobody is going to make an offer that is good enough.
There are maybe five defensemen in the NHL that can play on Subban's level and you are not getting one of them back in a trade. Any move Montreal makes here is going to be a quantity for quality deal, and that never works out in a team's favor.
One rumored offer that was floated out there was the Edmonton Oilers' No. 4 overall pick and Leon Draisaitl.
That is not even close to appealing enough for a proven player like P.K. Subban that is in the prime of his career and still has seven years on his contract.
You keep the superstar.
The combination of an expansion draft coming in one year, the fact that Marc-Andre Fleury would have to be protected based on the rules of expansion draft due to his no-trade clause, and Matt Murray's run to the Stanley Cup this spring all make Fleury a pretty obvious trade candidate this offseason, and especially this weekend.
The problem for the Penguins if they want to go in that direction: There is going to be almost no market for hin because most teams already have a starting goaltender in place, and the one team that is in the market for a starting goalie -- Calgary -- is going to have plenty of options.
Keeping both Murray and Fleury for another season would, from a hockey standpoint, be the best possible outcome for Pittsburgh in the short-term because they will have an opportunity to give both goalies a rest, see who is playing the best down the stretch, and have a safety net in case Murray regresses a bit.
That said, the additional cap space and clearing things up from an expansion standpoint would be beneficial.
Tampa Bay will have same problem that Pittsburgh is going to have if they want to move a goalie: There is almost no market for a starting goaltender at this point other than maybe the Calgary Flames.
Tampa Bay doesn't have to worry about the expansion draft (Bishop is an unrestricted free agent after this season) but they have an emerging star ready to take over in net in Andrei Vasilevskiy and would probably like to get some sort of a return on Bishop before he leaves for nothing. They could also use the salary cap space ($5.95 million) in the short-term with Steven Stamkos' free agency looming and the fact they have to re-sign restricted free agents Nikita Kucherov, Alex Killorn, Cedric Paquette, and Vladislas Namestnikov this summer.
Those guys -- especially Kucherov and Killorn and Stamkos if they can keep him -- will not be cheap and will quickly eat up their remaining salary cap space.
The Ducks have collected quite a group of young defensemen over the past few years and one of them -- Fowler -- has had his name dropped into the trade rumor mill over the past week. The salary cap itself isn't a huge issue for the Ducks because they have a lot of their younger players signed to some pretty solid long-term deals, but this is a team that does not generally spend to the cap, while they also have to reach a new deal with perhaps their best young defenseman -- Hampus Lindholm -- this summer in restricted free agency. The Ducks already have two picks in the first round (their own pick at No. 24, and the No. 30 overall pick acquired from Toronto in the Frederik Andersen trade) and they seem to be hoping they can get a third one.
Yeah, he is no longer playing in the NHL but his contract still has value, whether it's a team that is looking to just simply reach the salary floor without having to waste a roster spot (Arizona?) or a team that will use it as an opportunity to basically "buy" an asset from the Red Wings, this is a trade that could happen. We saw it happen a year ago at the draft when the Philadelphia Flyers moved Chris Pronger's contract to Arizona, and twice since then with Marc Savard's contract moving from Boston, to Florida, to New Jersey.
Shortly after Datsyuk announced he is leaving the NHL Red Wings general manager Ken Holland said he was not optimistic about moving Datsyuk's contract (and the incentive for them is obvious -- they do not want to have $7.5 million in salary cap space going to a player that will no longer play for them) and did not want to give up a significant asset, whether it be a first-round pick or a top-prospect.
Columbus' first-round draft pick
Every year we hear about teams at the top of the draft that want to move back, or teams lower in the draft that want to move higher. When it comes to top-5 or top-10 picks, it almost never happens. The team in the middle of the speculation this year is the Columbus Blue Jackets with the No. 3 overall pick. That seems like a bit of a surprise when the consensus is that there are three players that have separated themselves from the pack in Auston Matthews, Patrik Laine and Jesse Puljujarvi. Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen would seem to be pretty familiar with the latter two given their connections to the Finnish hockey program.
The issue though is they are both wingers and the Blue Jackets seem to have a desire to add a center after trading Ryan Johansen during the season. Moving back a few spots could help them do that while also landing a few extra assets.