The 6 NHL Players Who Could Request a Trade Next
When it was reported earlier this week that Anaheim Ducks goalie John Gibson said he was never playing for them again (which his agent vehemently denied), it was the impetus to fire up our collective imaginations about who around the league could be next in line to ask for a trade.
It's impossible for everyone to be happy all at once, and whether a situation is good or bad, sometimes it just isn't working. Other times, contract talks get acrimonious and the only thing that will make everyone feel better is to part ways.
When a trade demand goes public, it's like a celebrity breakup. There's drama, there are often hurt feelings and there's usually no coming back from it. That is unless you're Jake DeBrusk, of course.
So...who else around the NHL is in a precarious position?
Some choices are more obvious than others. We're making these predictions based on current rumblings about dissatisfaction, what a team has going on and whether there's a player on that team who could use a change of address to improve their situation. Let's free our minds and free some players from a tough set of circumstances.
William Nylander - Toronto Maple Leafs
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You may have heard about William Nylander reportedly asking for $10 million a season for his next contract. He's due to be an unrestricted free agent next summer and he's setting the bar high for himself. Good for him!
Of course, such talk is met with scoffs and skepticism as to whether he's worth that much or not. Is he a team player? Should Nylander take a hometown discount to keep the group together to try and win a Stanley Cup? Everything is dramatic with the Leafs, but this one is properly worth discussing.
If Leafs management doesn't see things the same way as Nylander, perhaps it's time for Nylander to force the issue and ask for a trade.
It feels like ancient history at this point, but when Nylander came out of his entry-level contract in 2018, he and the team didn't come to an agreement on a deal until the last minute before he would've been ineligible to play for the season. Coincidentally enough, Nylander's prorated cap hit that season was over $10 million.
The Leafs and new GM Brad Treliving are in a precarious spot. Nylander and Auston Matthews are eligible to become unrestricted free agents next July and they've already got captain John Tavares locked in with an $11 million cap hit and Mitch Marner at $10.9 million. It seems logical that Matthews would command a similar hit to Marner and Tavares which means Nylander wants in on it too. They are the "Core Four" after all, right?
If the Leafs don't want to meet Nylander at that point or within a reasonable distance of it, Nylander should ask to go somewhere else where they're more likely to do so.
Connor Hellebuyck - Winnipeg Jets
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We realize it may seem like we're cheating by selecting players who are in the final year of their contract before becoming eligible for free agency. But with Connor Hellebuyck alluding to wanting to go elsewhere when his contract is up, let's just pull the bandage right off and say he should demand a trade.
There's a big catch with this, of course. Michael Russo and Eric Duhatschek reported Hellebuyck is seeking $9 million per season in an extension and teams have been reluctant to pay that kind of money to goalies, particularly on a long-term contract.
The funny thing is the only goalies in recent years to get deals like that are Jonathan Quick from the Kings (10 years, $58 million), Sergei Bobrovsky from the Panthers (seven years, $70 million) and most recently Ilya Sorokin from the Islanders and Sorokin's extension came with a $8.25 million cap hit. Yes, Jordan Binnington got a six-year, $36 million contract from the Blues, but he's not on the kind of elite level as the other goalies mentioned were/are.
Even though Hellebuyck will be 31 years old when his new contract starts, goalies seem to have a different aging scale than skaters and a team acquiring him would be immediately in a better position to make a run in the playoffs. All it takes for this magic to happen is for Hellebuyck to say to trade him right now.
Conor Garland - Vancouver Canucks
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The Vancouver Canucks have been nothing but dramatic the past couple of seasons. When they signed Conor Garland to a five-year contract in the summer of 2021, it made sense as a sneaky savvy move. Garland was just coming off back-to-back 39-point seasons with Arizona and his offensive skills were supposed to help the Canucks' attack improve.
Even though Garland's raw numbers in goals and points have grown in Vancouver, his scoring rates have dropped in each of his first two seasons with the Canucks as has his ice time. His stats look better, but as the saying goes, looks can be deceiving. This decrease in everything from points to ice time to team success is reason enough for Garland to ask for a trade.
Garland is 27 years old and has three years left on his deal. His $4.95 million cap hit is a little juicy to be easily moved, but we're talking about a player who's ideally in his prime years. A change of scenery with a team that's a bit more settled into what they want to do could be the recipe for getting Garland back to the kind of play he had with the Coyotes and earned him his contract in the first place.
Mark Scheifele - Winnipeg Jets
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We promise we're not picking on the Jets, but we're trying to speed up the process in which they get their team built differently.
Last summer, Mark Scheifele sounded like a player who was ready to find a new team if things didn't straighten out. Then the Jets got back to the playoffs this season and lost to Vegas in five games. That loss in Game 5 led coach Rick Bowness to rip his team for the effort and chapped the backsides of almost every veteran player in the room.
Blake Wheeler was bought out, Connor Hellebuyck sounds like a guy destined to be on a different team by next season at the latest and Scheifele can't feel very good about where things sit from his point of view. Scheifele is due to be an unrestricted free agent next summer, but he should strongly consider demanding a whole new team and situation.
The Jets have been poking around for places to trade Scheifele and Hellebuyck alike but tiptoeing around and casually looking isn't getting the situation resolved. Scheifele putting pressure on the team to get him somewhere else ASAP would help speed things up (ideally) and make everyone a lot happier for moving on.
Scheifele could get a new start somewhere else and the Jets could get their organization streamlined with the return they'd get for him.
Jordan Binnington - St. Louis Blues
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There were rumors at the trade deadline a year ago that the Blues were poking teams around the league about trading Jordan Binnington. At that time, the Blues had Ville Husso outplaying the Stanley Cup-winning goalie and they were headed to the playoffs with Husso leading the way.
Fast forward to the present day and Husso left for Detroit. Joel Hofer is the new, young goalie who will push Binnington for starts. With the number of ups and downs Binnington has had the past few seasons and the general ornery behavior, he should flip the script on the Blues and ask for a trade.
Binnington asking to be moved would get the usual jokesters tearing it up online, but it might also give Blues GM Doug Armstrong a chance to breathe a big sigh of relief. After all, it was Armstrong who signed Binnington to a six-year, $36 million contract and it hasn't played out the way the Blues wanted it to.
Finding a team that's both in need of a goaltending upgrade and having the kind of cap space to make it all work is what makes finding a trade so hard. Two things are for certain: Binnington getting a change of scenery could go a long way to helping him turn things around and the Blues sending Binnington elsewhere might shake things up enough to get them back into serious playoff contention.
Alexis Lafrenière - New York Rangers
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It was three years ago when the Rangers selected Alexis Lafrenière as the No. 1 pick in the 2020 draft.
The Quebec native came in with all the hype customary for a top pick in the draft. He had a brilliant junior hockey career with Rimouski in the QMJHL, the same team Sidney Crosby played for, and with that kind of connection, Lafrenière was supposed to be somewhere on that spectrum.
But after three seasons with the Rangers, the now 21-year-old has yet to have a breakout season. Lafrenière had a career-high 39 points this past season after he set a career-high in goals the season before with 19. His numbers are improving but very gradually while some of his peers from the 2020 draft are breaking out in big ways (Tim Stützle, Anton Lundell, Cole Perfetti, and Jack Quinn to name a few). It's especially tough for Rangers fans to see Lafrenière struggle while New Jersey's Jack Hughes, the No. 1 pick in 2019, thrives with the Devils across the river.
For all these reasons, Lafrenière should ask for a trade to see if he can get the opportunity and the kind of system that will allow him and his game to flourish. The 2020 draft will be a fascinating case study in the years to come because that was the draft in which COVID made scouting players intensely difficult.
Still, Lafrenière was the No. 1 prospect with a bullet with 297 points in 173 career games (regular season and playoffs) with Rimouski and he had 112 points in 52 games in his draft season. That he hasn't evolved in the pro game at all is deeply unfortunate and something that should make him want to look elsewhere.
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