While the official trade deadline in the NHL isn’t until March 6th, there is an earlier trade deadline of sorts with the annual holiday roster freeze. During that time, while a limited number of NHL-AHL roster moves can be made, trades are a no-go from December 20th through December 27th. While this can spur the odd move including last season, it typically comes and goes without much fanfare.
But things are a little different this time around. In the new CBA, there are restrictions on teams retaining salary on a player whose salary has already been retained on. Put in the new CBA to seemingly quash the three-team double-retention trades that became quite commonplace in recent years, a player must spend 75 in-season days on a roster before they can be moved with retention again.
While most of the CBA won’t come into effect until mid-September when the current agreement officially ends, this is one of the elements that was brought into play a year early. As a result, if a team wants to acquire a player with salary retention and still be able to move that player with retention before the trade deadline, they have to get the deal done before the 20th. Otherwise, while the acquiring team can still flip that player before March 6th, they won’t be able to retain salary to facilitate that move.
While there aren’t a lot of defined sellers at the moment, there could be some potential buying teams out there who might be interested in taking a look at a player while leaving themselves some flexibility to move the player later on if he’s not a fit or they fall out of the playoff race. Having the ability to retain in that scenario would make the player more valuable so it wouldn’t be surprising to see an uptick in trade talks as a result.
Last year, there were a trio of trades made before the roster freeze, headlined by the Kaapo Kakko trade to Seattle, but none of them involved salary retention. We’ll soon see if this rule change spurs on a more active trade period by Friday or if it will come and go more quietly as it often does.