NHL Trade Rumors: Top Reports Around the Web Heading Toward 2015 Draft

With the 2015 NHL draft just days away, teams are frantically working to get any potential deals done before the first round begins Friday.

Draft picks always make for great trade chips, and you can bet that plenty of general managers are using them as such in order to push through whatever business they're currently working on.

Looking at the current landscape, the three rumors below are worth following in the ensuing days—and potentially weeks.

Chicago Blackhawks Getting Serious Interest in Patrick Sharp

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A side effect of winning three Stanley Cups in six seasons for the Chicago Blackhawks is that they must, at times, make difficult financial decisions. They have to constantly adapt because it's simply impossible to retain the same core of players each and every season.

It doesn't take a salary-cap expert to see that that the team needs to shed some money this offseason.

Trading Patrick Sharp might be the way Chicago alleviates its cap situation.

According to Mark Lazerus of the Chicago Sun-Times, as many as eight teams are considering a deal for the 33-year-old.

Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press threw the Detroit Red Wings out as an option but questioned whether the Blackhawks' asking price might be too high for any team to see a trade as feasible:

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However, rumblings out of Chicago have the asking price for Sharp at a first-round pick, a top prospect, and an NHL forward on an entry-level contract. That's best described as absurd. Sharp is a proven winner, but he's 33 and coming off a season that saw him limited by injuries to 68 games, where in he produced 16 goals and 27 assists for 43 points. He'd been close to a point-per-game player in three of the previous four seasons.

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While you cannot begrudge Chicago for trying to get the best trade haul possible, St. James brings up great points about Sharp's age and his slight dip in form last year. Sharp is a proven forward, but he's not in the prime of his career anymore.

The offseason is just getting underway, which might be why the Blackhawks are possibly asking for so much. They might lower their demands if they cannot find a suitor in a few weeks or even months.

Either way, expect Sharp to be in a different uniform at the start of the 2015-16 season.

No Shortage of Interest in Cam Talbot

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How much will a team be willing to part with in order to acquire Cam Talbot?

After all, we're talking about a 27-year-old goaltender with 57 NHL regular-season games under his belt. While Talbot has a .931 save percentage and a 2.00 goals-against average during those games, it's still a pretty small sample size.

TSN's Darren Dreger has kept fans up to date with the interest surrounding the New York Rangers goalie, and plenty of teams are throwing their hats in the ring:

CBS New York's Sean Hartnett speculated the Edmonton Oilers might be the perfect trade partners for the Rangers, after a report from Murray Pam of the Hockey News indicated they might be willing to part with the 16th overall pick if Talbot was available:

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However, it would be hard to imagine the Oilers trading away the pick straight up for Talbot. This year’s draft features a very deep first round, so a package of Talbot and top-four quality defenseman Kevin Klein could be tempting to Edmonton, as it would fill two needs. For the Rangers, dealing away Talbot and Klein would free up $4.35 million in cap space. Klein will be paid an average annual salary of $2.9 million through the 2017-18 season.

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Puck Daddy's Ryan Lambert wrote a great, in-depth analysis to try to determine just how good Talbot is based on both his NHL and lower-league record. By Lambert's estimation, Talbot's career numbers tell the story of a solid goaltender:

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But given that we have all this data, we can look at him not based on about 1,600 NHL shots, but the more than 9,500 he's faced in his entire career. And in that time, he has a .917 save percentage. That sounds, y'know, about right for what a decent but not great player would do across all levels of the game. And really, .917 isn't bad at all. Ben Bishop was a .916 goalie this year, while Jonas Hiller, Jonathan Quick, and Sergei Bobrovsky all went .918. That's good company. And it's right in the wheelhouse of what he's done at just about every level he's at which he's played in the last decade.

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There are plenty of reasons for a team to acquire Talbot this summer. In the short time he has spent in the NHL, he has played very well. The Rangers hardly missed a beat when he was on the ice. The $1.45 million he'll earn next year is also a reasonable sum if his numbers from the past two years are repeated in 2015-16.

The big thing for any teams interested will be not buying too high and paying over the odds. Really, Talbot likely won't be all that much better in the future.

The only reason you'd be concerned if your favorite team traded for him is if it paid for and expected an elite-level goaltender.

Columbus Blue Jackets Looking to Move in Draft

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The Columbus Blue Jackets own the eighth pick in the 2015 draft. That should ensure they're still able to get a talented prospect for the future. That prospect will likely be a defenseman given the comments below from general manager Jarmo Kekalainen, per Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch:

Portzline added that the Blue Jackets' desire to move up in the first round but haven't received any substantive offers.

As Portzline notes, the first two picks are obviously off limits since Connor McDavid and Jack Eichel are almost universally regarded as the best players available and a measurable distance better than anybody else. With that said, you wonder where Columbus could reasonably land that's better than eighth and if it would even be worth it.

If the Blue Jackets are set on taking a defenseman—and they should be—then their best options are Noah Hanifin, Ivan Provorov, Jakub Zboril and Zach Werenski. Aside from Hanifin, there's a good chance those guys will be available at No. 8.

Columbus might be better off just standing pat and taking the risk rather than parting with one or more assets on draft night.