The first attachment below is a link to an ESPN article detailing its opinon on the winners and losers of trade deadline deals. With respect to contenders / AKA buyers, it is difficult to argue with the notion that Colorado greatly enhanced its status as Stanley Cup favorites. With the additions of fellow two-way centers Nicolas Roy and Nazem Kadri last week to go with Nathan McKinnon and Brock Nelson, the Avs now have the deepest center pool in the league. In particular, Kadri’s re-acquisition provides Colorado with a known quantity who helped them to a championship in 2022. Both Roy and Kadri have paid immediate dividends on the score sheet, with each player registering a point with the Avs.
Also, there has been much discussion regarding the savvy moves made by GM Craig Conroy on behalf of a rebuilding Calgary club. It began with the pre-Olympics’ deal sending free agent-to-be Rasmus Andersson to Vegas for a first-round 2027 pick, a second-round 2028 pick, and solid d-man Zach Whitecloud with two years left on his deal. It ended with sending Kadri to Colorado, also for first and second round picks and promising forward prospect Max Curran of the WHL’s Edmonton Oil Kings. Among other moves, Conroy also dealt d-man MacKenzie Weegar to Utah for three second-rounders and point-per-game forward prospect Jonathan Castagna of Cornell University. That is nothing short of a most impressive haul by the Flames.
The attached ESPN article goes on to label Washington and Buffalo as trade deadline losers. With respect to Washington, I disagree with this assessment . While the Caps parted with long-time star d-man John Carlson, the non-contenders did manage to receive from Anaheim first and third round picks for an aging player in the last year of his contract. With respect to Buffalo, I agree with this assessment. It certainly was a big blow to lose out on St. Louis d-man Colton Parayko when he invoked his no-trade clause to nix the Sabres’ then-pending deal with the Blues. The only potential bright spot to this story is that the Sabres acquired depth d-men Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn from Winnipeg, and didn’t mortgage the future of the franchise to do so.
Speaking of not sacrificing its future while improving his team, Steve Yzerman and the Detroit Red Wings fit that bill nicely. Yzerman added to Detroit’s scoring punch by acquiring consistent forward David Perron from Ottawa, and top-four d-man Justin Faulk from St. Louis. While the Wings parted with first and third round 2026 picks to get Faulk, they replaced the third-rounder by dealing forward Elmer Soderblom to Pittsburgh. The Perron acquisition cost merely a 2026 fourth round pick.
The second link below is to a nice article by Adam Gretz in the Bleacher Report, in which he assigns grades to each NHL team’s deadline moves. In reviewing this article, I believe some grades are bang-on, and some are not. I leave it to you to judge for yourself.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/25403717-grading-every-nhl-teams-2026-trade-deadline