Are There Trades on the Horizon in the NHL
Dave Pagnotta of The Fourth Period joined SiriusXM NHL Network Radio with Steve Kouleas and Martin Biron and was asked if we could see some trades sooner rather than later.
NHLRumors.com Transcriptions
Steve Kouleas: “Anything close this early on the trade front, I mean, we always talk about U.S. Thanksgiving. We have a whole bunch of everyone in the East thinks they’re good, right? Nobody’s under NHL .500, and who are we going to trade within the East? So what we got, maybe two and a half bad teams? We think. What is St. Louis and Minnesota going to do? Trade with each other? It’s so early, so I’m sure there’s nothing on our front burner. What do you think might happen sooner rather than later?
NHL Rumors: St. Louis Blues, and the Edmonton Oilers
Dave Pagnotta: “Well now, Kooli, everyone’s going through their due diligence time, which is a little earlier than normal, maybe because more teams have cap space. Think that might be playing a factor here. But, some teams want to know, do they have a shot later on at a guy like obviously, we know (Nazem) Kadri in the reports there that when teams have reached out to understand they’re one of the 13 on his no trade list.
I think there’s going to be a similar situation to see if a guy like Brayden Schenn is a possibility to pursue later on in the season. He’s got a 15-team no-trade. Is that an avenue to pursue if the (St. Louis) Blues can’t climb out of the hole that they’ve dug themselves in that first month? If they can’t go on a bit of a stretch here and get back into the full thick of things in December, in January, is that going to be a target?
Ryan O’Reilly, who does not have any trade protection, but unofficially does? Similar situation. Teams are starting to look around to see alright, here are some of our targets. Here’s who we’d like to go after.
Minnesota is a team I thought last week – and was told last week – is kind of looking for a mid-tier, mid-six type of forward, interchangeable, second- or third-line player who can provide a little secondary scoring. I think they’re going to be looking at, and from what I was told yesterday and today, that they’re out there kind of looking to see if now, maybe there’s a bigger fish. Maybe it’s a top-six, a legitimate top-six winger that we could potentially pursue versus a mid-six guy.
NHL Rumors: Steve Stamkos, and the Toronto Maple Leafs Forward Depth
So everyone’s kind of just looking around to see what the options are right now. And, one phone call, all of a sudden, everybody gets going, and, boom, we’ve got another, and we’ve got a deal. But, right now, I think it’s more so just the combing out process to see where things are at. But it does seem like there are a lot of teams that are starting to go through that to see what the options are.
And you never know if there’s an opportunity to pounce earlier than later, some of these teams are collecting that info to try to do that.”
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