5 Trades That Should Have Happened at 2025 NHL Trade Deadline
The 2025 NHL Trade Deadline has come and gone and some big names changed teams.
Mikko Rantanen is a Dallas Star, Brad Marchand is a Florida Panther and the Colorado Avalanche loaded up with Brock Nelson and Charlie Coyle.
A lot of the names that changed teams were expected, and some might play a big role in this year's eventual Stanley Cup champion.
But sometimes the trade deadline is not just about the moves that get made.
Sometimes it is also about the trades that did not get made.
So, let's examine a handful of moves that were not made by Friday's 3 p.m. ET deadline and whether or not they should have been made.
John Gibson to Edmonton
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Getting Jake Walman was a nice pickup for an Oilers defense far too reliant on its top pairing. But was that enough to help the Oilers get through what is looking to be a gauntlet of a Western Conference playoff?
Edmonton’s goaltending situation is one of the worst among contenders, with Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard having sub-.900 save percentages. That is the one position you do not want to have a question mark at going into the playoffs. It can easily sidetrack a potential Stanley Cup season.
The goaltending market at the deadline was alarmingly thin with only Petr Mrazek getting moved.
Even though Gibson’s game has declined in recent years, and has been dealing with injuries this season, he would have been the highest-upside goalie reasonably available, and it might have worked out for both sides to come to some sort of an agreement.
Gibson might have benefitted from the change of scenery and playing behind a better team, Edmonton might have prospered from having a potential solution in net—or at least an upgrade—and Anaheim would have benefitted from dumping the remainder of Gibson’s contract.
It would have been a risk, but perhaps it would have been a risk worth taking for Edmonton.
Brock Boeser to a Contender
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What exactly are the Vancouver Canucks doing here?
They traded J.T. Miller to clear out a headache that was sidetracking the season and then acquired Marcus Pettersson and Drew O’Connor as pending UFAs...only to re-sign both to long-term contracts.
They sold, they bought, and they are still on the fringes of playoff contention in the Western Conference.
When it came to Friday, all eyes were on forward Brock Boeser as his name started to surface in trade speculation given his status as a pending UFA. The Canucks were trying to re-sign him but failed to reach an agreement. They also failed to move him and face the possibility of losing him for nothing after the season.
It’s a tricky spot because Boeser is a productive player. But he is also a flawed player who may not be worth a big-money deal on his next contract. But he is still a valuable player, and it would hurt tot let him walk away.
Canucks GM Patrik Allvin tried to play off the lack of a trade as being the result of no good offers.
Without knowing exactly what the offers were it is impossible to know how accurate that is. If he is telling the truth, it’s also telling that other contenders did not value his skills given the prices they were paying for players like Anthony Beauvillier.
Erik Karlsson and Rickard Rakell to Contenders
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The Pittsburgh Penguins traded a lot of players this season, with the list including Lars Eller, Marcus Pettersson, Drew O’Connor, Michael Bunting, Anthony Beauvillier, Luke Schenn and Cody Glass. In return for that group, they received forward Tommy Novak and fully stocked their cupboard with more draft picks over the next three years than any other team in the league.
The two big names that did not go were defenseman Erik Karlsson and forward Rickard Rakell.
Maybe that is not a huge surprise.
Moving Karlsson would have been tricky given his contract ($10 million per year for another two full seasons) and no-trade protections. He has not panned out in Pittsburgh the way the Penguins probably had hoped, but he remains an excellent offensive player from the defense and will still probably get traded before his contract expires. That just seems like more of an offseason type of move.
Rakell seemed to be the more likely of the two to get moved because he has a much more manageable contract and having a better season.
The Penguins set a high price on him—and rightfully so—and did not seem in a hurry to move him despite the ongoing nature of their rebuild and the fact this might be a career year for him.
It makes sense.
They still have plans of competing relatively soon—or at least they keep saying they do—and Rakell is an excellent player under contract for three more years at $5 million against the cap.
He would have been an ideal fit for a team like Los Angeles, Carolina or New Jersey that needed another goal-scorer and finisher.
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Chris Kreider to a Contender
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Kreider has been a rock for the Rangers for over a decade, but his name has been in trade speculation all season. It seems like his time with the team will come to an end at some point in the not-too-distant future, and the trade deadline seemed like it was going to be a possibility.
He isn't having anything close to the season he has had over the previous three years when he was one of the top goal-scorers in the NHL, but he is still useful.
But trading him is not necessarily a matter of on-ice play.
It would be about shedding salary and creating salary-cap space for more impactful players, it would be about getting younger, and it might even be about just shifting the vibe of the organization right now.
This season has been wildly underwhelming, and something has just seemed off with the team. Nobody seemed to handle the offseason well when Barclay Goodrow was jettisoned and Jacob Trouba was put on the trade block, and things only got worse when word leaked that Kreider and other top players were on the trade block as well. It just seems like a situation where everybody involved needs a fresh start. Kreider and the Rangers very well might get it in the offseason.
Kyle Palmieri to a Contender
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The New York Islanders got it right with center Brock Nelson, trading him to the Colorado Avalanche for a haul of players that included top prospect Calum Ritchie and a first-round pick. They knew they could not get Nelson signed, and even if they could it would have made sense to move him given his age and the offer they received from Colorado.
For as good of a job as they did with the Nelson situation, they botched it with Kyle Palmieri.
He should have been sent to a contender not long after Nelson was.
Like Nelson, he is also a pending unrestricted free agent, and the Islanders are also trying to get him re-signed. That is a very risky move given that he will be 35 next season and has almost certainly already played his best, most productive hockey.
The Islanders are not going to the playoffs this season and need to focus on turning the page and getting younger assets into the organization.
Re-signing 35-year-old wingers is not going to help them in the short-term or the long-term.
Palmieri could have helped a contender. He is not going to help the Islanders much.
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