The 2026 NHL trade deadline didn’t produce a true blockbuster — but it didn’t lack for drama.
We had fascinating rumors, players blocking trades, some surprising names on the move — and some names that surprisingly didn’t move, despite expectations.
Something else the deadline had: overreactions, to the trades that were made, the teams that stayed on the sideline and whether the league’s new salary cap rules ruined our annual chaos.
Here are 10 overreactions to the 2026 NHL trade deadline that we judge to be absolutely reasonable or totally misguided.
The Avalanche are going to win the Stanley Cup
The Colorado Avalanche entered the trade deadline in the same spot they were in back in October: first overall in the Central Division, Western Conference and the NHL overall. But GM Chris MacFarland is never one to be comfortable on the throne. He’s one of the most aggressive managers in the league — please recall him blowing up his goaltending tandem and trading away Mikko Rantanen last season. It wasn’t a matter of if he’d do something at the deadline, but what he’d do.
MacFarland got ahead of the frenzy by trading Sam Girard and a second-rounder to Pittsburgh for defenseman Brett Kulak in late February. At the deadline, he picked up defenseman Nick Blankenburg from Nashville; added center Nicolas Roy from Toronto for a package including a 2027 first-round pick that is top-10 protected; and in his biggest swing, reacquired center Nazem Kadri, who left for the Calgary Flames as a free agent after winning the Stanley Cup with Colorado in 2022.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
The Avalanche are the NHL’s best offensive team (3.79 goals per game) and defensive team (2.42 goals against per game) and have managed to outpace the Dallas Stars and Minnesota Wild in the league’s toughest division. But as MacFarland’s actions show, there’s always room for improvement — and the Avalanche are a better team now than they were before the deadline.
The additions of Kadri and Roy to Nathan MacKinnon and Brock Nelson give the Avalanche the best center depth in the NHL. Roy is a defensive stopper who played 22 games in Vegas’ run to the Stanley Cup in 2023. Although one can quibble about how a 35-year-old Kadri’s contract will look when it ends in 2028-29, there’s no denying he brings some much-appreciated snarl to this lineup and should improve one of the Avs’ biggest flaws this season: their power play, which was clicking at just 15.8% entering Tuesday’s action. Kadri played 6:43 on the man advantage in his first game with Colorado.
Kulak, meanwhile, is an ideal third-pairing defenseman who can move up the lineup. He showed his value during two long playoff runs with the Oilers over the past two seasons.
I picked the Avalanche to win the Stanley Cup before the season. They’ve given me no reason to rethink that as of yet; and at the trade deadline, they might have underscored my confidence in that prediction.
The Stars and Wild didn’t do enough
The Stars and Wild know what’s ahead of them. According to Money Puck, there’s a 76% chance the Stars finish in second place and an 81% chance the Wild finish third in the Central. Thanks to an NHL playoff format that has three of the league’s top four teams meeting before the conference finals, Dallas and Minnesota are likely going to meet in the first round before the winner faces the Avalanche (barring a truly shocking wild-card upset of Colorado).
One would assume these teams would seek blockbuster upgrades before the deadline to win their playoff series and then potentially take down the Avs. Instead, there were minor positional upgrades, which isn’t nearly enough.
The verdict: PARTIAL OVERREACTION
The Stars have lost in three straight conference finals, which is to say they’ve made three consecutive conference finals, too. They’re the second-best team in the NHL behind the Avalanche and have proved it in the standings for much of this season. With that established, I didn’t hate their deadline.
The biggest name, both in prestige and measured height, was defenseman Tyler Myers of the Vancouver Canucks. Cost of acquisition was a real key here: a second- and a fourth-round pick, with the Canucks retaining 50% of Myers’ contract, which runs through next season. He’ll be cast correctly in Dallas as a third-pairing defenseman and should find his game again away from the mess that is Vancouver.
He’s not as good as Chris Tanev but is better than Cody Ceci, if we’re comparing him to recent Dallas deadline adds. Would Dallas be better with Rasmus Ristolainen on the right side? Of course, but combine cost and cap hit — keeping in mind there’s a Jason Robertson extension on the horizon — and adding Myers is fine. Michael Bunting, acquired from Nashville for a third-rounder, is there to help offset the loss of Tyler Seguin for the season. Hopefully a change in scenery does him good.
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Miro Heiskanen glides the OT winner in for the Stars
Miro Heiskanen makes the most of an assist from Matt Duchene with an overtime goal.
So, Dallas’ deadline was acceptable, as there is proof of concept that the Stars can be a successful postseason team. The Wild, however, needed to do more than what GM Bill Guerin accomplished before last Friday.
The Wild made three deadline-day additions, bringing in defenseman Jeff Petry, winger Bobby Brink, and most notably, left wing Nick Foligno to join his brother Marcus. (In one of the deadline’s unintentionally funniest moments, Guerin said the first thing he told Minnesota native Brink was that “this is not a family reunion” on the same day he united the Folignos.)
From a cost of acquisition standpoint, it was more good than bad: The Wild sent away two sets of future considerations, a conditional seventh-round pick and defenseman David Jiricek, who hadn’t found his game in back of a logjam on the Minnesota defense. But the Wild anted up a second-rounder to Nashville for fourth-line center Michael McCarron, and that’s an overpayment.
The biggest problem is that McCarron was the best center they acquired at the deadline. As stated before, Colorado has the best center depth in the league. Dallas has players such as Wyatt Johnston, Matt Duchene, Roope Hintz and Radek Faksa that it can put in the middle.
Are Ryan Hartman, Joel Eriksson Ek, Danila Yurov and McCarron enough to win the West? Maybe I’m just still working through the shock of Vincent Trocheck of the Rangers not ending up with his Team USA general manager at the deadline, but this doesn’t seem like a championship group in the middle of a very good lineup otherwise.
Getting Corey Perry means the Lightning are winning the East
In one of the deadline’s true overpayments, the Lightning traded a second-round pick in 2028 to the Los Angeles Kings for 40-year-old Corey Perry on the same day the Kings acquired Scott Laughton from Toronto for a conditional third.
But hey, who cares how much it cost, because the Bolts now have Corey Perry, which means they’re going to play for the Stanley Cup!
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Look, who are we to argue with the Hockey Gods? They have deemed that if a team has Corey Perry on its roster, it will play for the Stanley Cup.
In five of the past six seasons, Perry has played for the Cup with Dallas (2020), Montreal (2021), Tampa Bay (2022) and then twice with Edmonton (2024, 2025). The only time he didn’t play for the Cup was in 2023, when the Hockey Gods were so preoccupied with how to maximize the eventual disappointment of Maple Leafs fans that they allowed Perry’s Lightning to lose to Toronto in the first round.
Based on the available evidence, the Lightning will win the Eastern Conference this season … before losing in the Stanley Cup Final, which is something Corey Perry has also done in five of the past six seasons.
The East contenders did nothing
According to Money Puck, the Florida Panthers have a 1.5% chance of making the Stanley Cup playoffs this season. Which means the team that has marauded through the East for the past three postseasons will be coping at the Elbo Room rather than celebrating, leaving the conference wide open for another contender.
And yet … where were the big moves from those contenders? Perry was the only addition for the Lightning. Carolina picked up Flyers bruiser Nicolas Deslauriers … and that was it, leading to head coach Rod Brind’Amour’s newly famous lament that, “I know there’s a lot of disappointment, I’m going to be honest … The players were hoping to see us make a splash. It’s tough.”
Montreal literally did nothing. Boston did close to that by trading a sixth-rounder to Vancouver for Lukas Reichel and swapping some AHL players. Pittsburgh added forward Elmer Soderblom and defenseman Samuel Girard, but that’s not exactly jamming open the window to win for Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin.
The only two teams to make significant moves that are in current playoff positions were Detroit (trading for Justin Faulk and David Perron, fantastic adds if this were 2020) and the New York Islanders, who took on the full freight of 34-year-old Brayden Schenn‘s contract ($6.5 million average annual value) through 2027-28.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
I didn’t mention Buffalo yet, and that’s because it’s illustrative of the Eastern Conference contenders’ deadline.
The Sabres took a huge swing at St. Louis star Robert Thomas, but talks never got as far as reported, as Thomas wasn’t asked to waive his trade protection. Talks did get that far with a bid for Blues defenseman Colton Parayko, but he declined to waive. So, the Sabres settled for Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn of the Winnipeg Jets, two depth defensemen.
GM Jarmo Kekalainen went for it. Due to mitigating circumstances — the price to add Thomas, Parayko’s trade protection — the Sabres fell short. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. Ditto Canadiens GM Kent Hughes, who told reporters that a significant deal he was chasing didn’t get over the finish line on Friday.
That’s probably the case for a number of the teams mentioned above. Is there anything in Carolina GM Eric Tulsky’s history that would indicate the Hurricanes wanted to stop at acquiring a face-puncher from Philadelphia? Of course not. The cost to acquire players was high. The market was unfavorable. Big swings were hard to make.
Which is to say that outside of two teams — three, if you want to rope in the Columbus Blue Jackets and their Conor Garland trade — the East contenders didn’t do much to separate themselves from the pack. But there are reasons for that.
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Conor Garland scores goal for Blue Jackets
Conor Garland nets goal for Blue Jackets
The Predators dramatically botched the deadline
There was much intrigue about what the Nashville Predators would do at the NHL trade deadline. Not only because they had big-name players with varying degrees of trade protection — Steven Stamkos and Jonathan Marchessault with no-movement clauses, Ryan O’Reilly with a gentleman’s agreement that he can choose his next destination — but also because GM Barry Trotz is a lame duck, ready to hand off the gig to someone else after this season.
The Predators shipped out three depth forwards (Bunting, McCarron and Cole Smith) and defenseman Blankenberg. All the big names remained in Nashville, during a trade deadline where the returns were robust.
The verdict: OVERREACTION, WITH A CAVEAT
For the players mentioned above, Trotz pulled two third-round picks, a fifth-round pick, a prospect in defenseman Christoffer Sedoff and, most importantly, a second-round pick for pending UFA McCarron. The last trade is a win in anyone’s book.
But the veteran stars didn’t move.
Trotz said he got “really good offers” for O’Reilly and Stamkos but ultimately decided to keep them around because Nashville is still vying for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference. The Predators have just over an 18% chance of making the cut, which is not exactly comforting but also not nothing.
Therein lies the caveat. If Trotz had come out and said that O’Reilly, Stamkos and Marchessault weren’t moved because no one would meet their terms or because of trade protection, that’s one thing. To not move them because the Predators have an 18% chance of earning the right to get swept by Colorado, that’s another.
There’s no greater example of this than Erik Haula not being traded. He’s a pending unrestricted free agent with great value, both as a crafty veteran forward (34 years old) but also after an outstanding Olympics. Yet Trotz held on to him due to lineup concerns at the center position, feeling Haula was more valuable there than as a trade option.
O’Reilly, we’ll give you. Stamkos, sure. But choosing long-shot playoff contention over trading a journeyman center in a favorable market? That’s nuts.
So overall, it’s OK that none of the big three moved. There’s always the summer. It’s the justification that makes us wince.
Goalies are never getting traded at the deadline
There were 20 deals involving 33 players at the 2026 NHL trade deadline. None of them featured an NHL goaltender moving from team to team.
This was despite several goaltenders reportedly being available, ranging from stars like Sergei Bobrovsky and Jordan Binnington to journeymen like Alex Nedeljkovic to wild cards like Stuart Skinner.
It was like this last trade deadline, too. In 2025, only one NHL-caliber goalie moved at the deadline: Petr Mrazek, who was sent from Chicago to Detroit.
For all the fantasy casting that went on leading up to last Friday — Jordan Binnington as the last piece of Connor McDavid‘s Stanley Cup puzzle! — once again the NHL trade deadline was like an empty net.
The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION
Blame Ryan Miller.
The 2014 NHL trade deadline blockbuster that saw the Blues acquire the Sabres’ star goalie remains one of the league’s cautionary tales among managers. He was supposed to backstop them to the Stanley Cup. Instead, he posted a sub-.900 playoff save percentage as St. Louis lost in the first round.
It happened again in 2017 when the Los Angeles Kings acquired Ben Bishop at the deadline. He went 2-3-2 with a lower save percentage than in his previous 32 games with Tampa Bay.
The fact is that goalies need some runway to get to know a new system and the tendencies of new teammates. Think about how long it’ll take a goalie before he understands what a defender is going to do against a rush scoring chance, for example.
“A big part of goaltending is building a long-term trust with a group,” Miller told Daily Faceoff in 2022. “You’re getting to know the group. You’re building trust and goodwill amongst the players, even the fan base. There’s little things that you don’t really think about that play a part in a goaltender having success. You’re asking for a lot to come around in a month and a half or two months. It’s hard to replicate that quickly.”
There are always going to be counterarguments. Dwayne Roloson was traded at the 2006 deadline and backstopped Edmonton to the Stanley Cup Final. Marc-Andre Fleury played well in 2022 after the Wild acquired him from Chicago at the deadline.
But overall, goalie moves are better made well before the deadline. Which should make for an interesting summer for someone like Binnington.
Leaks are the new pressure point
One of the most curious trends at the 2026 trade deadline was how many deals were leaked that required players to waive their no-movement or no-trade clauses for them to be completed.
In most cases, these trades were eventually completed: Jason Dickinson to Edmonton, MacKenzie Weegar to Utah and Brayden Schenn to the New York Islanders, although in his case it might have been a hotel meeting with coach Patrick Roy that did the convincing. But in two significant cases, they were rejected: Tyler Myers refused to waive his trade protection for Detroit, and Colton Parayko canceled a trade between the Blues and Sabres by flexing his no-trade clause.
There are always trades that leak before they’re fully baked. But the sheer volume of them at this season’s deadline — and the very public pressure on a player like Parayko to sign off on a deal for the Blues — made some believe this is a new way for general managers to break through their players’ trade protection.
The verdict: OVERREACTION
This is inevitable given the speed with which news moves via the NHL’s insiders. Parayko was in talks with the Sabres and contemplating his future when TSN’s Darren Dreger reported, “It’s believed Parayko to Buffalo is going to happen. Things are being finalized. Player needs to approve, etc.” Before you knew it, players on Buffalo’s side of the trade were being mentioned, too.
There’s no doubt the news leaking put pressure on Parayko. “With the person that he is, it was hard on him. Seeing him, you knew how much he was hurting,” his friend and teammate Oskar Sundqvist told The Athletic.
Ultimately, with little time to process this major life change, Parayko said he decided to remain with the Blues.
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Colton Parayko scores goal vs. Predators
Colton Parayko scores goal vs. Predators
Again, it’s worth noting that the Blues were involved in two of these situations: Schenn needing to waive for the Islanders and Parayko to the Sabres. They were also involved back in 2023, when defenseman Torey Krug was compelled to waive his trade protection thanks to published reports of a pending trade. (He did not.)
This time around, GM Doug Amstrong ordered an investigation of his staff’s phone, text and email records, and declared the leaks did not come from the Blues. We just hope he gets to the bottom of it.
Again, it was a weird deadline in that so many trades were delayed by players having to decide about their trade protection or opting to use it. If next year is like this, we’ll reconsider, but now it’s an overreaction to believe this is how the league’s general managers are doing business.
New CBA rules made this deadline a dud
The new collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA begins Sept. 16. The league, however, moved up a handful of new rules governing the salary cap to the 2025-26 season.
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A de facto “playoff salary cap,” where teams must submit a 20-player game-day lineup whose “averaged club salary” is under the “upper limit” of the regular-season salary cap for that team.
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Changes to long-term injured reserve rules that limit how much of an injured player’s salary a team can replace, unless it rules him out for the season.
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The unofficial end of “double retention” on a player’s salary, in which two different teams retain a percentage of a player’s cap hit to facilitate that player ending up with a third team. The new rule states there need to be 75 regular-season days between trades in which that player’s salary is retained. That’s a level of planning that doesn’t jibe with the deadline.
As I reported earlier this month, some managers and agents were upset with these rules being implemented this past September instead of in the summer, when teams could better prepare for them.
As for this deadline, some managers thought that the lack of double-retention trades was the reason so many deals felt like singles and doubles instead of grand slams. New Jersey GM Tom Fitzgerald said that affected the deadline “a lot” in his post-deadline evaluation.
“Teams would’ve made more moves if prices were split in half twice. I do think that had something to do with it. I think it was obvious by looking at the past and how many double retentions there were versus this year,” he said. “When you take that out, it’s probably why you saw … I don’t want to say as little trades, but not as many as the past.”
The verdict: OVERREACTION
I’m not sure how many players would have moved through double-retention trades. One general manager told me he estimated that it was “two or three” trades that didn’t happen.
According to PuckPedia, almost every double-retention deal in the NHL has involved players on expiring contracts. That’s because the facilitating team doesn’t want one of its salary retention slots taken up for multiple seasons. In 2025, for example, pending unrestricted free agents Yanni Gourde (Tampa Bay, via Detroit) and Trent Frederic (Edmonton, via New Jersey) moved in double-retention trades. In 2024, Noah Hanifin was a pending UFA when Calgary sent him to Vegas via Philadelphia.
This deadline, the most significant UFA with a contract large enough to require retention was Sergei Bobrovsky ($10 million AAV) of the Florida Panthers — and as we mentioned, there aren’t a lot of deadline deals involving goalies. Maybe Patrik Laine ($8.7 million AAV)?
But the main reason I feel blaming the new CBA rules is an overreaction: It’s actually the rising salary cap that’s causing this lack of player movement.
That was the case last summer in free agency, where more players than expected re-signed with their teams rather than testing the market. With the salary cap at $95.5 million this season and rising to a projected $104 million for 2026-27, an expiring contract is no longer a pressure point at the deadline.
“The salary cap affected every team at the deadline here. Teams could keep their players or had the option of keeping their players,” Red Wings GM Steve Yzerman said.
“There’s seems to be more money in the system because of the cap growth. It’s been really easy for teams to go out there and re-sign their players, which doesn’t put anybody at the end of their contract,” Mammoth GM Bill Armstrong said. “There wasn’t a lot of people and inventory into the market. It’s kind of what we’re going to see for the next few years.”
The new CBA rules were a factor, but the salary cap’s rise has created a new normal.
Carlson’s trade means Ovechkin is retiring
John Carlson was the longest-tenured teammate of Alex Ovechkin‘s on the Washington Capitals, dating back to 2009-10. That tenure ended when Carlson was traded to the Ducks.
“It’s obviously a sad day. Probably the toughest day in my career, talking about personal-wise,” Ovechkin said last Friday. “It sucks. It’s sad. He’s obviously the best defenseman in the franchise’s history. A leader. An unbelievable man and a great friend for all of us.”
Immediately, questions about Ovechkin’s own future crept into the conversation. Is Carlson’s trade a harbinger of what’s to come with the Capitals legend?
“I don’t know. I’m still here, so we’ll see what’s going to happen. It’s a hard one,” Ovechkin said.
The verdict: OVERREACTION
I don’t think Carlson’s trade is a harbinger of Ovechkin’s decision. The only thing it tells us is that the veteran defenseman wasn’t in the Capitals’ plans beyond this season as a pending UFA, and that a very smart front office didn’t let sentimentality get in the way of asset management. (See also: Nic Dowd, traded to Vegas.)
That isn’t to say this might not be Ovechkin’s last season.
If Ovechkin’s NHL future was a speedometer, the needle would certainly be closer to “retirement” than “returns for 2026-27.”
Ovechkin has 24 goals and 26 assists in 65 games. Last season, he had 44 goals and 29 assists in 65 games, much of them spent chasing down Wayne Gretzky’s career goal-scoring record. The Capitals are likely to finish outside of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time in three seasons.
In an interview with ESPN’s T.J. Oshie, Ovechkin said the key to his decision is how his body is going to feel.
“Right now, hockey is so hard. So fast. I’m 40. It’s hard to keep up with the young guys,” he said.
Ovechkin added that he wants to make sure that his body doesn’t suffer wear and tear — a back injury, for example — that will impact his quality of life after retirement.
I’ve gotten a sense of two things regarding Ovechkin and the Capitals this season. The first is that the team has been unsure of his decision. The second is that if he makes it and this is the end, there won’t be a Marc-Andre Fleury-esque farewell tour. Ovechkin wasn’t totally comfortable with how the circus around his Gretzky record chase overshadowed his team and teammates.
There’s a chance his decision could be announced in the offseason.
The NHL must get rid of trade protection
There would be so many more trades if it weren’t for all these dang no-trade and no-movement clauses!
Maybe the NHL should just work to get rid of them in the next collective bargaining agreement.
The verdict: OVERREACTION
Let’s all say it together: An NHL player’s trade protection is a negotiated part of his contract, usually given to him in lieu of increased financial compensation or to make one team’s contract offer better than another’s during free agency. A player shouldn’t be faulted or maligned for using that protection to nix a deal, no matter how inconvenient that becomes for either team in the nixed trade.
That said: Is it time to get rid of trade protection because of how many players currently possess it?
According to PuckPedia, 37% of all active players have trade protection. But when you limit that pool only to players who are eligible for a no-trade or no-movement clause, it’s an astounding 56% of those players. For teams like the New York Islanders (15), Vegas Golden Knights and Carolina Hurricanes (14 each), and New Jersey Devils and Tampa Bay Lightning (13 each), it’s the coin of the realm.
If the owners were to go after trade protection in a non-collusive way, it would require a significant concession on their part to do so — and if you’ve followed CBA negotiations through the years, the owners aren’t usually in a giving mood.
But the players would also have to be willing to give up that protection. The fact that 56% of eligible players have it in their contracts should be a decent clue about how likely that is to happen. If anything, the players want it expanded. It was reported last season that players wanted partial no-trade clauses to also cover the same teams in potential waiver claims, which was something that came up when the Rangers parted ways with Jacob Trouba.
At best, perhaps the NHL and the NHLPA could put some sort of cap on the number of years that a contract can have full trade protection. The two sides have negotiated other restrictions on contract structure in recent years, from contract length to frontloading deals.
One interesting concept we’ve heard: To have teams be able to buy out trade protection for a pre-negotiated sum. Interesting in theory, at least: How would one calculate that under the salary cap? Better question: How long would that mechanism last after some enterprising team uses it to clearly circumvent the cap?
The next CBA starts this September and runs through Sept. 15, 2030. So, we’ll have to wait a while to see if no-trade and no-movement clauses are on the table.
