Author: Gavin Lee

Holger Stolzenberg

Carolina Hurricanes Acquire Max Pacioretty

While the Jack Eichel trade stands out, the return wasn’t much of a surprise. What stood out in my mind, however, was the consequences of the trade for Vegas, who suddenly was way over the cap with no end in sight to be able to fix it. That led to the Max Pacioretty trade in the offseason in which Vegas sent the veteran forward and his $7MM contract to Carolina along with defenseman Dylan Coughlan for future considerations.

What I remember most of that is the beating that Vegas took in the press for the transaction, being forced to move a top forward for nothing. And while I agree that the Golden Knights should never have put themselves into that position, I think moving Pacioretty, who almost immediately suffered a significant injury, made plenty of sense.

Pacioretty, while productive, could never stay healthy and was costing the team a fortune. While he could help Carolina in their playoff run later this year, it really doesn’t look like the Golden Knights miss him that much. Meanwhile, Eichel has become the franchise player that they envisioned before they traded for him. As for Coughlan, it seems like a wash as the team does have a lot of minor league depth on defense, so no loss there.

I think the move worked out quite well for Vegas.

Ethan Hetu

Ottawa Senators Acquire Alex DeBrincat

For me, the Blackhawks’ deal to send Alex DeBrincat to the Ottawa Senators was not, on its own, the most memorable transaction of 2022. Instead, it’s what the Alex DeBrincat trade meant for one of the league’s marquee franchises that makes it such a defining moment of this year in hockey.

For most NHL franchises, making a trade as the Blackhawks’ first-year GM Kyle Davidson did would be unthinkable. Although the reality of DeBrincat’s restricted free agency and rapidly approaching eligibility for unrestricted free agency complicated matters, the fact of the matter is that DeBrincat was a 24-year-old player who had just scored 41 goals and 78 points. It was the second time in his young career that he crossed the 40-goal threshold, and he had firmly established himself as one of the league’s premier snipers.

In other words, this is not the sort of player a team should be trading. DeBrincat, a young elite scoring winger, is the textbook player a rebuilding franchise should build around, not cash in for draft picks like an aging veteran who won’t be around the next time his team is able to contend. And yet despite this conventional wisdom, Davidson chose to send his potential franchise pillar to Ottawa in exchange for a collection of draft picks.

Typically, when a team entertains the idea of trading a player like DeBrincat, they will hope to receive young, NHL-ready, or close to NHL-ready prospects. These are both “high upside” assets while also theoretically being safer investments than draft picks, as they are further along their development cycle. The Blackhawks chose not to acquire a player of that sort from the Senators, such as center Shane Pinto to give an example, preferring a package of draft picks that became Seattle Thunderbirds defenseman Kevin Korchinski, Kingston Frontenacs forward Paul Ludwinski, and a future mid-round pick.

Bold is definitely the word to use to characterize the choice, but what made the decision to convert a star forward into draft capital the most memorable transaction of 2022 is what it signified for the Blackhawks franchise. It was their warning shot, telling the rest of the NHL that their franchise’s primary objective would be stockpiling draft picks and prospects.

The 2019 third-overall pick Kirby Dach, just 21 years old and with much left to still be determined about his NHL future, was sent away in order to acquire another first-round pick. Valuable salary cap space was sacrificed (via the acquisition of Petr Mrazek) in order to move up the draft order to nab USHL defenseman Sam Rinzel.

While the Brandon Hagel trade may have been the first real move of the Blackhawks’ rebuild, the DeBrincat trade was their statement move, telling the rest of the league that they were and are firmly open for business. With a potential Patrick Kane trade having the potential to alter the balance of power among contenders in the NHL, the profound ripple effect of this summer’s DeBrincat trade makes it unquestionably the most memorable transaction of 2022.

Gavin Lee

Carolina Hurricanes Acquire Brent Burns

The Tkachuk trade stands out for me just because of the sheer amount of talent that was involved, but there’s another one that I still can’t seem to get out of my mind. I know that a lot happened on July 13 this year but it really seemed like most people glossed over Brent Burns heading to Carolina, and I’m not exactly sure why. I get the feeling that a lot of people may have forgotten just how good he is, or at least has been.

Let’s take a look at a few names, and without looking it up, guess if they have more career points than Burns.

• Scott Niedermayer
• Chris Pronger
• Sergei Gonchar
• Borje Salming
• Rob Blake
• Sergei Zubov
• Scott Stevens

How many did you get right? Only Stevens (908) and Gonchar (811) have outscored Burns’ 800 points. He sits 18th on the all-time list of defensemen, ahead of a whole bunch of Hall of Fame players. But he played forward! Yep, he sure did. Had he stayed a defenseman his whole career, Burns would likely actually have more points than he currently does.

When the Sharks got him and played him upfront for a couple of seasons, his production actually went down because he was only on the ice for around 16 minutes a night.  In 2012-13 and 2013-14, he had just 68 points in 99 games. He had at least 60 in each of the following five seasons as a full-time defenseman, not to mention finishing as a Norris finalist three times during that span (and winning once).

He’s now playing nearly 24 minutes a night in Carolina, who have come roaring back from a mediocre start to take the lead in the Metropolitan Division. As I write this, the team is winning their eighth in a row, and will be 22-6-6 going into the holiday break. A potential HOF defenseman switched teams after a decade, and nearly 600 points with one team – and it seemed like no one was really paying attention.

Sure, Burns has flaws. He isn’t a great defender, he isn’t as physical as he once was, and he takes a lot of risks. But remember that the Hurricanes are only paying him $5.28MM of his $8MM cap hit after the Sharks retained salary. That’s less than guys like Esa Lindell, Nate Schmidt, Tyler Myers, and Erik Johnson – a group that has combined for 28 points on the season.

For whatever reason, that trade still sticks out in my mind as one that I didn’t see coming.

Photos courtesy of USA Today Sports Images

Brian La Rose

Tampa Bay Lightning Acquire Brandon Hagel

It certainly wasn’t the biggest move nor the splashiest, but Tampa Bay’s acquisition of Brandon Hagel is one that stunned me at the time. Not that the Lightning going and getting help wasn’t expected but the price tag (two first-round picks plus two young, cost-controllable roster players) seemed almost unthinkable for someone with Hagel’s somewhat limited track record.

Consider that Hagel was drafted by Buffalo and wasn’t offered a contract. Montreal brought him in as a camp invite and didn’t see fit to sign him either. Chicago did but he only played in 108 games before the trade, scoring 30 goals. Decent, sure, but worth two first-round picks plus Taylor Raddysh and Boris Katchouk? No, I certainly didn’t see that coming.

What really made this trade memorable for me is how much it hammered home the value of team-friendly contracts. Trades are supposed to be about adding talent and key pieces but this move really emphasized that in this marketplace, math is what deals are all about. The top players don’t necessarily have the best trade value. Now, it’s the cost-effective players that do, especially ones with multiple years on a team-friendly contract. That’s how a forward with 30 career goals fetches two first-rounders.

Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t intended to be negative toward Tampa Bay. I fully get the logic and it’s absolutely defensible within the context of their cap situation. And Hagel is doing a nice job for them. But if someone would have suggested to me a month before the deadline that Brandon Hagel was going to be the player that brought back the most first-rounders, I’d have thought that person was joking. This move was an eye-opener for me in that sense, so it’s one that is definitely memorable.

Zach Leach

Boston Bruins Acquire Pavel Zacha

While blockbuster trades, lopsided swaps, or other headline-grabbing transactions are often the most memorable – and 2022 had its fair share – the deals that usually stick with me are the thinkers. There are always some trades that seem to heavily favor one side and beg the question “What was the GM thinking?” In 2022, the biggest head-scratcher in that regard was the Pavel Zacha–Erik Haula swap.

The New Jersey Devils are an up-and-coming young team that has nearly $25MM in salary coming off the books after the 2022-23 season. In Zacha, they had a 25-year-old restricted free agent forward coming off of a career-high in points and a defensive renaissance. The Devils could have found a way to manage the cap in order to sign Zacha to a multi-year deal and allow him to keep growing with their young core. The counter to this, of course, is that perhaps GM Tom Fitzgerald and company didn’t see the upside in paying to keep Zacha and wanted to trade him instead, which would be perfectly valid even if incorrect.

However, the player they chose to swap him for (straight up) was 31-year-old journeyman Haula, who was entering the final season of his contract and will be an unrestricted free agent at year’s end. He enjoyed a solid season in Boston in 2021-22, recording 44 points in 78 games, and is certainly the more experienced scorer and defensive player compared to Zacha. But his per-game production last year was not all that different than Zacha’s 36 points in 70 games and Haula was skating with the Bruins’ elite top-six for most of the campaign.

In fact, Zacha had the superior career points-per-game mark, the higher career average time on ice, better checking numbers, better possession numbers, and more. Considering again that Zacha was six years younger and under team control, while Haula is a stopgap depth piece for (at the time of the trade) a team that was not expected to contend for a postseason spot, the deal didn’t make much sense.

Since the trade was made, the status quo has changed somewhat. The Bruins signed Zacha to a one-year deal, making him an impending unrestricted free agent as well. This was yet another odd wrinkle to the trade, but understandable given Boston’s difficult short-term and long-term cap squeeze and primary focus on competing for a Stanley Cup right now. Even as a fellow UFA, Zacha still is the better player in the deal and has proven it this season.

Prior to their ongoing slide, the Devils were the biggest surprise of the early 2022-23 season as one of the top teams in the NHL and Haula has been contributing with 14 points in 33 games. And yet, the Bruins are undoubtedly the league’s top team and Zacha is playing a key role, recording 19 points in 31 games. Given the question marks in Boston’s aging core, Zacha looks like a potential long-term fit with the Bruins if the two sides can strike a deal before free agency.

Haula, though admittedly now a valued veteran piece of a team with playoff ambitions, is still likely to be one-and-done with the Devils. Even in the midst of a strong start to the season and a bright future, New Jersey fans should still be wondering why they moved on from Zacha, why they targeted an impending UFA in exchange for an RFA with no certainty of contending this season, and why they couldn’t get more than Haula (from Boston or elsewhere) in exchange? It’s a strange deal that I still find myself thinking about.

John Gilroy

Florida Panthers Acquire, Extend Matthew Tkachuk

It’s not very often that a pair of Hart candidates and a Norris candidate are all traded for each other. In fact, the last and only time two players coming off of 100-point seasons were dealt for each other, it was the trade that sent Wayne Gretzky to the Los Angeles Kings, with Jimmy Carson going the other way.

There are two key elements of this trade that make it the most memorable to me. The first is that Weegar, frequently listed among the favorites to compete for the Norris, was likely the third-best player involved in this trade. Adding to that, remember Florida also sent a first-round pick to Calgary with Weegar and Huberdeau.

The other part of this that makes it memorable is the timing: late at night on a Friday more than a week after free agency had opened. Personally, I recall checking my phone one last time before putting it down to go to bed, not expecting to see much, but instead getting one of the biggest blockbusters in league history.

Nobody would bet on this type of deal going down, but if it was going to, it’s hard to imagine it would happen anywhere other than the floor of the NHL Draft.

Nate Brown

Ottawa Senators Acquire Alex DeBrincat – Montreal Canadiens Acquire Kirby Dach – Chicago Blackhawks Acquire Petr Mrazek

I’m going to bundle the triumvirate of trades that the Chicago Blackhawks made during the 2022 NHL Draft. The Blackhawks had peddled their 2022 first-round pick to Columbus, which wouldn’t you know it, ended up being a top-ten pick. New general manager Kyle Davidson went to work, dealing Alex DeBrincat for Ottawa for its seventh overall pick, a 2022 second-round pick, and a 2024 third-round pick.

As the hockey world was digesting the deal, Davidson shipped 2019 third-overall pick Kirby Dach to Montreal for the Canadiens’ 13th-overall pick and a third-round pick. Finally, Davidson sent the Hawks’ 2022 second-round pick to Toronto for its 25th overall pick and goalie Petr Mrazek.

This signaled two things to the league.

• Chicago was all-in on a rebuild. It immediately led to speculation about Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews‘ future in the Windy City, but as of this panel, they’re still in the fold.
• Davidson was not gun-shy and would make deals that could accelerate the Blackhawks’ rebuild.

Chicago has obviously gone hard into the Connor Bedard tank-a-thon and Davidson got a jump start on it by acquiring three picks to potentially bring along should Chicago win the Lottery in 2023.

Check back for part 2 later today!