It could be slow season for trades
Rob Rossi of The Athletic: Pittsburgh Penguins GM Jim Rutherford is prepared if training camp were going to be opening up in a few weeks, but also prepared to adjust their schedules.
If/when hockey gets back going, on what the trade market could be like.
“If there are trades this season,” he said. “I don’t know.”
It could a be slow season for NHL trades.
“It’s probably more like football than ever,” Rutherford said, referring to an NFL where in-season trades pale in comparison to the NHL. “It’s probably going to be more where you set your team and that’s going to be your team.”
With seven teams being in Canada, and the countries having travel and quarantine rules, trading becomes a little more complicated.
Both teams and free agents are waiting things out
Thomas Drance of The Athletic: It’s been almost eight weeks since the last NHL trade, and a month since we’ve seen the last UFA sign a one-way deal. Teams are waiting to have more clarity on the 2020-21 NHL season.
Teams are still laying some groundwork on potential deals with unrestricted free agents. Many believe that once the season timeline is announced that there will be the next wave of moves.
“In early November teams were calling every day. Now it’s every other day,” one prominent player agent, representing one of the top remaining UFAs told The Athletic. “They’re still indicating interest, but some of them are waiting. And some of it is us. We want to wait too.
“We want to see what develops out of this. At this point, it doesn’t make sense to do something until we know what things look like … If we wanted to have signed already, we could’ve done that. Then again, those teams we could’ve signed with haven’t done anything else yet either. It’s like a very long engagement, or like there’s 31 people at the dance, but there’s just no dance partners.”
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