Predicting the Biggest Winners and Losers of the 2025 NHL Trade Deadline
We're a week away from the NHL trade deadline and all is quiet around the league. After the 4 Nations Face-Off wrapped up, the sprint to the deadline is also time for the final few games for general managers to figure out if they're competing for the playoffs or gearing up for the future.
Teams have so many games crammed into the schedule the rest of the way that fortunes could change dramatically in that time. We've seen the rumors about who may or may not be available and the hopeful wishes from fans who want to see nothing but blockbuster deals, but what we're concerned the most with is who the winners and losers of the deadline will be.
We're breaking out our crystal ball to see a week into the future to find out who got what they wanted from the trade deadline and who was left wanting. Winners and losers, there's bound to be a bunch of them, and we'll sniff them out for you.
Winners: Procrastinators
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The schedule has teams keeping occupied heavily until March 7 and because of that, teams that haven't decided whether they're buying or selling will be waiting until the final day to make that call. That makes it the perfect time for teams that know they're buying or selling to get business taken care of without feeling under the gun.
Teams like Chicago, San Jose, Nashville and even Seattle or Anaheim know they're ready to make moves to start looking ahead to next season and beyond. Playoff teams in the East and West, at least those in the top three spots in the divisions, should know what they need to do to fill holes within their lineups for the push for the Stanley Cup.
Of course, even those teams have games to play out until the deadline and injuries to be wary of so even they'll want to get through the next week and see if they have to make moves to address any sudden holes that pop up because of that. But the longer everyone waits, the more of a crush it will cause on deadline day to negotiate, haggle and try to hammer out a deal and desperate buyers and sellers help make trades that keep us talking for days, weeks and months to follow.
Losers: New York Rangers
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On one hand, you want to give the Rangers credit for getting out ahead of the deadline crush and making the big move to acquire J.T. Miller from Vancouver. Making a big trade like that on trade deadline day is hard to do and if teams want to add a big piece, doing that outside of the pressure of the day is generally best.
However...
Adding Miller to the group hasn't addressed the issues that have plagued the Rangers all season long. Their defense has struggled at 5-on-5 all season in allowing goals and quality scoring chances. New York's power play has been about average and their penalty kill has been excellent, but Igor Shesterkin hasn't been superhuman this year to help cover up a lot of what ails them.
The Rangers need to find ways to tweak the roster if they're going to punch through for the wild card, but after dealing away Kaapo Kakko to Seattle earlier in the season and sending Filip Chytil to Vancouver in the Miller trade, they're running low on big chips to deal unless they want to part with prospects they have in Hartford which is something Drury has always avoided doing. It won't be easy for them to get things done and the pressure to win in New York is forever sky-high.
Winners: Soon-to-be free agents
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Players whose contracts are coming up at the end of the season are always ones to watch when it comes to the trade deadline. They're the prime players to be moved as rentals to contenders and that can sometimes lead to big names landing in places we'd never imagine they'd end up.
This year we've got guys like Bruins captain Brad Marchand, Carolina's Mikko Rantanen, Toronto's Mitch Marner and John Tavares, Chicago's Ryan Donato, and Sabres forwards Jason Zucker and Jordan Greenway out there in the ether as guys whose teams should be thinking hard about the contract extensions they want to sign those players to.
Assuredly more than a couple of those guys will stay with their own teams because the salary cap is rising next season and beyond and it'll get a lot easier to maintain a budget.
If those negotiations aren't going on, however, and if those teams are stuck in limbo as to whether they're pushing for the Cup or playoffs or selling or want to retain those players for the future, that's when stunning trades happen. That we're seeing Marchand's name out there is staggering given his history with the Bruins.
All of the players we mentioned will get a nice boost out of their situations when it comes to contract talks either this year or in July, it's just a question of whether or not they'll get playoff games to help their cause.
Losers: Boston Bruins
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What in the world do you do if you're Bruins general manager Don Sweeney?
The Bruins are in a fight for the playoffs against Detroit, Columbus, the Rangers, Ottawa and have Montréal and Philadelphia nipping at their heels to get into the fight. There are a lot of games to play with a hundred different directions things can go. More importantly, they need help to make sure they can get back to the playoffs.
But how do the Bruins make impact deals? They have LTIR money to use thanks to Hampus Lindholm's injury, but they're lacking prospects to trade and players other teams would want in return (Trent Frederic for example) are guys they need to win themselves.
Sure, they can trade UFAs-to-be like Frederic or captain Brad Marchand, but again, isn't it better to have players like that than deal them and go looking for reasonably similar players to fill their roles? Everything about the situation is screaming for a re-tooling if not heading toward a rebuild, but with David Pastrnak and Jeremy Swayman signed long-term and having just given Elias Lindholm a big contract, it's not happening.
It feels like the spot the Pittsburgh Penguins have been in the past couple of years and they're still trying to figure that out. The Bruins will have cap space to work with next season, but getting the "now" in a place will be a challenge for Sweeney.
Winners: Winnipeg Jets and Washington Capitals
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No matter what happens at the trade deadline and no matter what the Winnipeg Jets and Washington Capitals decide to do, they're coming out of it in the driver's seat.
The Jets and Caps are the top teams in their conferences, and they've been crushing it since the start of the season and have yet to relent. And the best part for them about doing so? They don't have to do much of anything at the deadline.
Winnipeg has Connor Hellebuyck running away with the race to win his third Vezina Trophy, a defensive corps that's played solid hockey and a forward group that attacks in waves and has guys who can light it up throughout the lineup. They lead their division by double-digits and are in line to have home ice throughout the Western Conference playoffs if not the whole Stanley Cup Playoffs as long as they can hold off the Capitals for the Presidents' Trophy.
Similarly, the Capitals lead the Metropolitan Division by double digits and have a strong lead on Florida and Toronto for the best record in the conference. If they were in a perilous spot or in the same position as say Boston, we'd be busy talking about the "what ifs" of trading impending UFAs Jakob Chychrun, Andrew Mangiapane, Charlie Lindgren and Nic Dowd. But that's not happening because all of those players are helping them whoop up on the East.
If the Jets or Capitals make any moves, they'll be able to further deepen their rosters and make them much more formidable in the postseason. If they don't make any trades that won't be a surprise at all either.
Losers: Pittsburgh Penguins
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We've already seen the Penguins get in on some of the trade action this season when they sent Marcus Pettersson and Drew O'Connor to the Vancouver Canucks, but as a team that's still trying to get back to the playoffs for their core of veteran superstars, they've fallen well short of that and are well back in the race for the wild card.
Things are tough in Pittsburgh. We've seen rumors kick up about whether or not Erik Karlsson could be dealt and lots of fans and other media around the league wonder if even captain Sidney Crosby could land with a contender (Colorado to play with Nathan MacKinnon?) if they decided to go for a full rebuild.
It's a bad place to be in and GM Kyle Dubas doesn't have a lot of chips to use if he believes he can build the team up ahead of the deadline to make a wild card push.
The Penguins have forward Anthony Beauvillier and defenseman Matt Grzelcyk with expiring contracts to trade, but the return they'd get for them wouldn't be fortune-altering.
The Penguins want to get players for the roster in return in deals because they're not mailing it in, but the reality is they're lacking serious options unless they want to trade one of their future hall-of-fame stars.
