Most NHL Teams Want To Improve as the Trade Market Has Slowed Down
Dave Pagnotta of the Fourth Period joined TSN Radio in Montreal on Monday and was asked why the trade market slowed down, since it was supposed to be the summer of trades.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Host: “And you know, talking about taking the time to recharge the batteries and get a little bit of rest. When are we going to get some trades? Though? We were told it was supposed to be a busy offseason. It was supposed to be nuts. The cap is going up. People got room. Doing updates with likes in there like, Korean soccer. Let’s go. Where’s the trades?”
Dave Pagnotta: “Yeah, well, hey, I said, I said on the show as well, that it was going to be sporadic. It was going to be spread out, if it happens. I think along with a lot of people, expected a little bit more activity to this point, but you mentioned the cap space. There aren’t any teams in significant cap trouble at the moment. They’re fixable.
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Montreal is over. They can fix that with putting Carey Price on LTIR. Vegas is over, but they can fix that by putting Alex Pietrangelo on LTIR and so on. So there aren’t many teams that are ridiculously strapped from a cap perspective.
And there are a lot of teams that are looking to just improve. And when you’ve got a full market that is trying to improve everyone’s buying. Well, the buyers’ market makes things a little bit more difficult.
So these conversations, I believe, are still ongoing throughout the league. Teams are still looking to improve and find ways to make their clubs better. But it’s going to be, going to continue to be spread out.
And it’s because of the lack of urgency from teams to sell off pieces, while they also want to maintain being better outside of, probably Pittsburgh. This is kind of where we’re at.
So for clubs that still want to, like, yes, Montreal is still looking at the 2C, the Leafs would still love to be able to find somebody on the first line, right wing position, if they can, to slot someone in there. You’ve got Chicago that’s looking to add. You’ve got the Edmonton Oilers are actually have been kind of looking around as well to see if there’s another top six addition, if they can get creative in the market.
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So there are a lot of teams that are looking. It’s just a buyers market, things slow down from that side of things, because the urgency just isn’t there for teams to get rid of guys.”
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