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There are still two weeks until the trade deadline, the biggest day on the regular season calendar for Stanley Cup contenders or teams looking to become contenders. It's the one time of year when the floodgates open and players who would never have been available under other circumstances suddenly become available, often costing nothing but future assets. For a smart general manager, this is the time to shine and make the big move (or two or three) that will get his team over the finish line and win him a big shiny ring.
Unless it isn't. Maybe the deadline is a trap, an overhyped flea market where bad teams try to leave their overpaid, underperforming junk to desperate suitors while being cheered on by media and TV networks looking for a story. Then, as Brian Burke once claimed, GMs of rival teams make more mistakes than on any other day and pay exorbitant prices for rentals that inevitably have no effect other than disrupting team chemistry.
You get the picture. Part of the annual deadline story is the debate over whether it should even be such a big story, or whether it's all exaggerated nonsense that teams should be happy to sit out. You'll hear it again this year, when you'll be reminded about 100 times that last year's finalists, Vegas and Florida, had quiet deadlines.
We will continue this debate. But instead of listening to me, let's let some of history's greatest champions make their case. Let's look at the pros and cons of an aggressive deadline, as argued by the teams that won it all.
They have won the cup five times since 1991, and all five involved significant postponements. In 2009, a year after a heartbreaking loss to the Red Wings, they prepared for the upcoming rematch by adding wingers Chris Kunitz and Bill Guerin. You know how the story went with Kunitz, as he would serve as Sidney Crosby's favorite winger for years to come. As for Guerin, while it may seem reckless to give up a good draft pick for a 38-year-old, it paid off with 15 postseason points. In 2016, they found Justin Schultz, who played a key role in back-to-back championships. In 2017, it was Ron Hainsey, a move that seemed insignificant at the time but proved crucial when Kris Letang lost in the playoffs.
Of course, these moves are small potatoes compared to arguably the biggest deadline deal of all time: the six-player blockbuster that signed Ron Francis in 1991. Back then, the Penguins had plenty of talent, but had never managed to put it all together. Francis turned out to be the final piece, and no matter how you may remember, he didn't come cheap, costing them a package that included a guy in the middle of a 110-point season. The Penguins could have told themselves that they had a promising core and just had to play it back until everything fell into place. Instead, they made one of the most aggressive moves ever and were rewarded with the first two championships in franchise history.
The obvious conclusion: No courage, no glory.
The argument against: Every modern Detroit Red Wings championship
Maybe you remember these guys. Four championships in 12 years, a near-dynasty where they competed against each other almost every year. They were pretty good at “building a winner” for a decade or two, and we can probably learn from them. So how did they do it?
As it turns out, not on the deadline. Let's look at all four years in which they won it all and see what schedule changes they had to endure.
They made just one move in 1997, bringing in Larry Murphy from the Toronto Maple Leafs. He's a Hall of Famer and has contributed to a few upcoming championships, but at the time of this deal he was considered all but finished, so the asking price for his acquisition was literally nothing – an offer that has nothing to offer anyone in the League seemed ready to push through and beat. In 1998 they added a few more ex-Leaf blueliners, Jamie Macoun and Dmitri Mironov, who weren't exactly great influencers. In 2002 they chose Jiri Slegr. And in 2008 it was Brad Stuart.
That's it. Five experienced defenders of varying quality over four deadlines. The Red Wings weren't afraid of making major changes back then and added names like Brendan Shanahan and Dominik Hasek in big, bold moves. They just didn't make it on time.
One might think that this was some kind of organizational mandate, but that would not be entirely true. The Red Wings occasionally got aggressive at the deadline, including in 1999. After back-to-back championships, they went all-in on one of the most impressive deadline day hauls of all time, acquiring Chris Chelios, Wendel Clark, Bill Ranford and Ulf Samuelsson. Then they lost in the second round, ending their hopes of a three-game sweep.
Add sparingly, win the cup. Go hard go home. The moral here is pretty clear.
This could have been the team we should have started with. Sure, it's only a year. But it may have been the most aggressive closing day we've ever seen.
Neil Smith made five deals that day, including three big ones. In doing so, he produced a first-ballot Hall of Famer in Mike Gartner and two very good young players and acquired a number of role players and veterans. You could argue very convincingly that from a neutral perspective, the Rangers lost every one of these deals. Gartner was better than Glenn Anderson. A 20-year-old Todd Marchant was far more valuable than the shell of Craig MacTavish. And in perhaps the worst deal of all, Smith gave up Tony Amonte, a 30-goal scorer who was just entering his prime, for two experienced defensive players in Brian Noonan and Stephane Matteau. Amonte reached the 900 point mark.
Does any Ranger fan want a replay? Of course not, because this team won the Stanley Cup. And while we'll never know what would have happened if the Rangers hadn't beaten, missing the deadline led directly to at least one moment that felt important. Neil Smith wasn't worried about looking bad, hurting feelings or the chemistry of his valuable team. He went to work. If not, then we're talking about an 80+ year drought in New York. Instead, Ranger fans can look back on one of the most memorable cup wins of all time.
No courage, no glory and flags fly forever.
The argument against: The Anaheim Ducks 2007
Oh great, the Rangers, a strong team from the pre-cap era. Very useful example. I'm sure it was appreciated by the 10 percent of readers still alive at the time.
Meanwhile, in the real world, we can look back on the 2007 Ducks. On the surface it looks like they were busy leading up to the deadline, but none of these deals were truly blockbusters. (Shane Endicott's multiple trades are a good indication.) The only meaningful move was the addition of veteran depth player Brad May. Otherwise, Brian Burke stood still.
And that wasn't a coincidence. This is the year that gave rise to the infamous Burke quote we referenced above about GMs making their worst mistakes at the deadline. It's not that Burke was afraid to make a deal – far from it, both in Anaheim and at future stops. He was one of the boldest trade artists in modern NHL history, including pulling off the offseason blockbuster for Chris Pronger that essentially won the Ducks that very championship. Burke loved the art of the deal more than any other modern GM.
Just not on the deadline. There's a lesson there.
The Case for: The 2006 Carolina Hurricanes
Oh, so we're doing veteran GMs of the early cap era? Cool.
Admittedly, Hurricanes GM Jim Rutherford didn't have the luxury of pushing back the deadline since no one had been kind enough to give him a Hall of Fame defenseman who had just left his team. Instead, he had to roll up his sleeves and get to work, acquiring Mark Recchi on the deadline and Doug Weight a few weeks earlier.
It cost him a lot – a first-rounder, a second-rounder, two fourth-rounders and a lot of young players and up-and-comers. But it paid off in the franchise's only Stanley Cup victory, with Recchi and Weight both playing key roles along the way. Recchi was particularly important, scoring six points in the Stanley Cup Finals, including the game-winning goal in a decisive 2-1 win in Game 4.
As far as those picks and prospects go, none of them turned out to be anyone the Hurricanes would particularly miss. The best of the bunch was probably Mike Zigomanis. Help me crunch the numbers here, all you timid deadline deniers – is Mike Zigomanis worth more than the Stanley Cup?
We've said it before, but it's worth repeating: flags fly forever. There's one flying in Carolina right now because Rutherford put in his chips.
Deadline deals sure are great when they work. But they rarely work, which is why we remember outliers like Recchi. The Capitals have been a good team for a long time and have typically strived for glory by the deadline. Their Alex Ovechkin-era history is littered with expensive additions like Cristobal Huet, Joe Corvo, Jason Arnott, Jaroslav Halak, Kevin Shattenkirk and Martin Erat. They even landed Sergei Fedorov for a year. And it didn’t help – the Capitals didn’t even make it out of the second round.
Then came 2018 and the caps remained largely unchanged. Their big addition was Michal Kempny, a 27-year-old with just 81 NHL games under his belt who many fans had never heard of. And that was the team that finally broke through and won the first championship in team history.
Sure, flags fly forever. And there's more than one way to win one.
The argument for this: The LA Kings in 2012 and 2014
Or: If the Capitals had been more aggressive, they might have won more than just that one meager championship.
For the Kings, that meant a couple of midseason blockbusters with the Blue Jackets. In 2012, a few weeks before the deadline, they landed on Jeff Carter. In 2014, it was Marian Gaborik on Deadline Day (along with Brayden McNabb in a separate deal).
Hey, guess what else happened in 2012 and 2014?
Both trades were big swings. Both were costly – the Kings gave up a first-rounder, a second-rounder and a conditional third-rounder, as well as the 2005 No. 3 pick in 25-year-old Jack Johnson. And both players were expensive, with Gaborik taking a $7.5 million cap hit and needing an extension while Carter was signed through 2022. The conventional wisdom is that such trades are simply too complicated to pull off during the season, especially considering that neither of these teams were Cup favorites or even playoff locks. Luckily for Kings fans, Dean Lombardi didn't think his job was too hard to be worth it.
This isn't rocket science. If you have a playoff contender, buy and do it as aggressively as possible.
The argument against: Doug Armstrong's St. Louis Blues
Like the Capitals, the 2019 Blues were another team that went on to win the Cup and did little at the deadline. In their case, they decided to send a sixth-rounder to the Ducks for Michael Del Zotto, who didn't even dress in the postseason. That was it.
A quiet deadline was actually unusual for Doug Armstrong, who has been uniquely busy in each of the previous two years. His Blues were in the hunt for the playoffs in both seasons. And both times, Armstrong sold anyway, receiving a first-round pick for Shattenkirk in 2017 and Paul Stastny in 2018. His 2017 team won a round, while the 2018 team missed the playoffs by a single point. You take your turns, you take your chances.
Armstrong doesn't care what's in the playbook – he'll buy or sell or nothing, or maybe even both on the same day. And when it was all over, he had his name engraved on the trophy after one of the few deadlines he completed. Don’t let anyone sell you simplistic narratives about the right way to do something.
The Lightning show us both sides of the coin, so let's start this story a year early, at the 2019 deadline, when rookie GM Julien BriseBois led one of the best regular season teams in history. The Lightning played conservatively and skipped the deadline entirely to maintain their chemistry. Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? Oops. They were defeated in the first round, one of the most humiliating failures in modern postseason history.
Apparently it was a lesson learned. The 2020 Lightning reversed course, showing us that you can meet the deadline by deviating from the typical formula. Instead of settling for expensive short-term rentals, BriseBois paid to make cheap investments in Barclay Goodrow and Blake Coleman. While both first-round picks cost, they played key roles in the back-to-back Cup victories.
At the 2021 deadline, BriseBois doubled its performance. He parted ways with another first-round pick, this time as part of a more traditional rental move for David Savard. The veteran blueliner had become this season's must-have, the annual player who seems to come out of nowhere and whose stock is hyped to the moon. The lightning landed him, and he did… well, not all that much. The deal was something of a bust, as Savard essentially established himself as the third pair.
But even then, an obvious overpayment is an argument for an aggressive deadline. Because the Lightning won the Cup, they moved to 32nd overall. It ended up with the Blackhawks, who used it on Nolan Allan, a defensive defenseman who, three years later, has yet to play an NHL game and is currently considered a “possible” big league player. Do you think BriseBois stays up at night worrying about the burnt pickaxe? Or is he too busy making his numerous trophy rings shine?
So there you have it – the pros and cons of aggressive deadline activity, as argued by nine of the Stanley Cup winners who have experienced it.
Did I intentionally put a thumb on the scale by making an additional argument for it? No comment! But now it's up to you. Let me know in the comments if you want your competitor to go big or play it safe.
(2017 photo of Sidney Crosby and Chris Kunitz: Dave Sandford / NHLI via Getty Images)