Problem Positions for 5 NHL Teams That Must Be Fixed With a Trade

There is a sense of parity to the early part of the 2025-26 NHL season, as there is a razor-thin line between the top teams, the middle teams and most of the bottom teams in the league through the first month-and-a-half of the season.

With parity, though, comes flaws. As in, most teams have some sort of deficiency that could hold them back from winning a championship.

Let's take a look at five potential problem positions for teams that must be addressed with an in-season trade to help get them over the top.

Detroit Red Wings: Defense

Allan Dranberg/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Moritz Seider

The Detroit Red Wings are off to their best start of the Steve Yzerman era, and one of their best openings to a season since their playoff drought began.

There are reasons for optimism here, but there are also reasons for concern, and a lot of them rest on their defense.

As a team, the Red Wings are 27th in the NHL in goals against per 60 minutes during 5-on-5 play and rank 21st in expected goals against per 60 minutes.

They have an outstanding No. 1 defenseman in Moritz Seider, and two really strong young defensemen in Simon Edvinsson and Axel Sandin-Pellikka. It's a good core to build around with a lot of upside and a lot of strong play already.

However, if you look at their most commonly used defense pairings, there's really only one that has consistently produced strong results.

Of their five different defense pairings that have already logged 80 minutes of 5-on-5 ice-time together, only one (Seider and Edvinsson) has outscored its opponents and produced a better than 50 percent expected goals share.

Every other combination has been on the negative side of both categories. There are still some weak links on the blue line. A player like Ben Chiarot can have a role and place in the NHL, but it should not be as the top-four, 20-minute-per-night player he currently is.

Finding an upgrade there would go a long way toward helping this promising start turn into real progress for the season—and the rebuild—as a whole.

Edmonton Oilers: Goalie

Andy Devlin/NHLI via Getty Images

Stuart Skinner

One of the great mysteries in the NHL right now is how the Oilers have not done more to address their goaltending situation over the past two or three years.

They keep running back the same duo that has repeatedly not been good enough. And then it's never consistently good enough.

While their team save percentage has mostly hovered around the middle of the pack in recent years (around the 16-18 mark going back to the start of the 2022-23 season), it has completely cratered in the first month-and-a-half of this season, entering play on Tuesday with the 30th-ranked team save percentage in the league.

It's been a big part of why they have been wildly disappointing this year, winning only seven of their first 17 games.

They allowed nine goals to Colorado over the weekend, and followed that up by falling into a 4-1 hole against Columbus on Monday before Connor McDavid put the team on his back and dragged it to a 5-4 overtime win.

While there are some defensive concerns on the roster, the goaltending situation would be the easiest to fix with one move.

There is no bigger X-factor in the sport than goaltending. It turns bad teams into playoff teams, and playoff teams into contenders, and contenders into champions when it is great.

It can also have the opposite effect when it is bad. Right now, it is having that impact on the Oilers. They have to find another goalie between now and the trade deadline.

New York Rangers: Forward Goal Scoring

Jared Silber/NHLI via Getty Images

Mika Zibanejad

There has been an alarming level of consistency to the New York Rangers and the way their games have been played this season.

They have consistently ended with the Rangers talking about doing all the right things, getting great chances, playing well, and simply not getting the results on the scoreboard because the puck is not going in the net.

There are two ways to look at this:

They are just extremely unlucky, and at some point, the goals will start flowing if they trust the process and stick with it.

The reason they are not scoring more goals is that they do not have enough goal-scorers to finish plays and turn those chances into goals.

Given the recent history of Mike Sullivan-coached teams, as well as the way the Rangers' roster looks on paper, there is a good chance No. 2 is happening more often than No. 1.

Over the previous three seasons, no team in the NHL had a bigger gap between their expected goals and their actual goals than Mike Sullivan's Pittsburgh Penguins teams.

The same thing has been true with Sullivan's early results with the Rangers.

He might well be a good tactical coach who can get players into solid scoring positions and generate a lot of shots and chances. But he has also had many aging teams that have lacked high-end finishers throughout the lineup.

That is definitely a problem for this Rangers team. One big offensive outburst against a bad Nashville Predators team should not fool them into thinking the problem is solved.

Whether it comes through a blockbuster move like St. Louis' Jordan Kyrou, or perhaps a rental like Buffalo's Alex Tuch, if the Rangers have any expectations of making the playoffs this season and shaking off this slow start, they are going to need another goal-scorer added to their lineup.

Toronto Maple Leafs: Defense or Goaltending

Julian Avram/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Anthony Stolarz

Maybe both?

Before the season, it would have been easy to look at the Toronto Maple Leafs and say they needed to do more to replace Mitch Marner. And they still might.

The Maple Leafs are scoring well; offense is not their issue right now. As of Wednesday morning, they are fourth in the NHL with 3.65 goals per game.

Some concerning underlying numbers suggest it may not be sustainable, and regular-season goal-scoring has never really been a huge problem for them. The playoffs are where the problem has been.

However, the fact remains, they are scoring goals right now, and offense is not the reason they are losing.

Their bigger problem is preventing goals.

They are 32nd (out of 32 teams) in the NHL in goals against, are only 16th in the NHL in expected goals against, and rank 30th in 5-on-5 team save percentage and 27th in all-situations save percentage.

They are banking on Anthony Stolarz, a player who's never started more than 34 games in a season, to be their starter right now, and it is not working as hoped. He had success over the past two years, but he played only 57 games during that stretch. He is still largely unproven.

Can Joseph Woll fix some of the goalie issues when he returns? Maybe. But even he's only been a league-average player the past two years.

Whether it is in the form of goaltending depth or another defenseman (Rasmus Andersson?), the Maple Leafs' biggest priority right now has to be preventing goals. They still might need a forward upgrade at some point as well, but right now, they have to figure out a way to keep pucks out of their own net.

Basically, at the end of the day, this is a team hoping to contend but has a lot of problems to worry about. That is not ideal.

[All advanced stats and data in this article via Natural Stat Trick]

Winnipeg Jets: Second-Line Center

Jonathan Kozub/NHLI via Getty Images

Jonathan Toews

At 10-6-0 entering play on Wednesday, the Winnipeg Jets are off to an excellent start. But when you pull back the layers, you see some potentially big concerns that may be problems later in the season and into the playoffs.

The first is they are simply giving up way too many chances defensively and leaning heavily on goaltending—specifically Connor Hellebuyck—to carry them. For the most part, he will. Whether he can do that for an entire regular season and postseason run remains to be seen, because he has run out of steam in the past few years.

The second concern—and perhaps a big part of why they are giving up so many chances—is a lack of quality depth. That is especially true at the center, where Jonathan Toews is basically their No. 2 center.

His return to the NHL and playing for his hometown team might be a nice story for Winnipeg, but it's not exactly producing strong results on the ice. In fact, when he is on the ice, he is producing lousy results.

In his 206 minutes of 5-on-5 ice-time, the Jets are being outscored by a 10-6 margin, while also owning a brutal 35 percent expected goals share. It is also not like they are putting Toews into tough defensive situations. He is getting 50 percent of the offensive-zone starts.

Toews was a great player in his prime for Chicago and a cornerstone piece to a mini-dynasty. But he is 37 years old, coming back from a multi-year absence in the NHL and was already showing signs of slowing down before he stepped away. Expectations should have been low. Winnipeg might be expecting too much with his current role.

They need more help down the middle if they are going to make a run at a Stanley Cup. A second-line center has to be at the top of their priority list. Somebody like Nazem Kadri would be worth looking at.