With the NHL trade deadline being a thing of the past, I hope all of your favorite teams made moves that aligned with how the team should be moving going forward. A contending team should have bought in an acquired some rentals to help vault themselves towards the Stanley Cup, while a team towards the basement in the standings should have sold off their expiring contracts where possible to acquire younger players and draft capital. More often than now, this isn't the case and your team's GM opts to stick with what they have and to "trust the process," which is to say that the team believes in what pieces they have under contract.

Most of the more exciting trades happened in the days and weeks leading up to the NHL trade deadline which left the actual deadline a little bit bare when it comes to notable players being moved around. With all of that being said, I will discuss the two teams that I felt won the trade deadline this year.

New York Rangers

Projected Cap Hit: $82,498,392
Projected LTIR Used: $0
Projected Cap Space: $1,608
Contracts: 48/50

Currently the Rangers stand with 79 points (record of 35-18-9) in the Metropolitan Division, good enough for third in the division with eight more points than the first wild card team in Pittsburgh. The Rangers have most recently acquired Patrick Kane from the Chicago Blackhawks and Vladimir Tarasenko from the St. Louis Blues, both of which are pegged to slot into the team's top-six forward group.

While the players themselves are world class, they are both expiring contracts at the end of the season, Kane has a cap hit of $2.625M and Tarasenko has a cap hit of $3.75M. If you remove both of those contracts from the Rangers payroll, they still have Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider, and Vincent Trocheck all locked up for between four and eight years.

With young players on the roster like Alexis Lafreniere and Kaapo Kakko, having spots open up allow the young blood to rise through the ranks and plug into the holes left by the trade deadline acquisitions. The savings that the Rangers have can allow them to help fill the holes on their roster, realistically the cap space could be used to fill out their bottom-six forward group, or to help solidify quality middle-pairing defensemen. While the Rangers are a top-heavy team, imagine that they will look to balance that out in the offseason.

One player that we need to keep note of is Filip Chytil. He is an expiring contract who makes $2.3M now, but expect the potential RFA to get a decent pay increase considering he is crushing his previous season highs this season with a total of 19 goals and 18 assists for 37 points though 54 games. Out of the players that have a somewhat comparable contract (currently active contracts), Chytil seems to be the best when it comes to his offensive metrics, so expect the Rangers to do what they can to retain his services going into next season.

This is a team I would recommend drafting from in your leagues, as they have a lot of players who aren't in need of new contracts soon who possess solid value across multiple aspects of the game. These are what I would consider to be controllable assets as their individual salary won't change randomly. The team is looking to compete each year, and with the roster that they have, who can blame them. While they do have expiring contracts, none of which are going to leave massive holes if they leave in free agency (not counting Kane and Tarasenko as they seem to be purely rentals, but you never truly know). The Rangers could opt to weaponize their cap space and get more complimentary players to play alongside their elite core or allow young players to gain footing at the next level.  

Boston Bruins

Projected Cap Hit: $84,017,557
Projected LTIR Used: $1,557,061
Projected Cap Space: $39,504
Contracts: 49/50

The Bruins were sneakily good this trade deadline season and managed to move minimal assets to acquire really solid NHL players in Tyler Bertuzzi ($2.375M – expiring contract, UFA), Garnett Hathaway ($1.5M – expiring contact, UFA), Dmitry Orlov ($1.275M – expiring contract, UFA). They managed to acquire these assets at a retained salary price, so if you're wondering why the listed cap hits are smaller than you'd imagine, that is why.

The Bruins are currently the best team in the NHL without a doubt. With an outstanding record of 48-8-5, they are the fastest team to get 100 points in NHL history. As much as we all wish Boston weren't on this level, we just have to accept it and deal with it.

They're a weird team when it comes to their salary structure as they have a weird amount of money tied up in awkward places. For example, Charlie Coyle has four more years left on his current deal that has a cap hit of $5.25M, Brandon Carlo as five years left and makes $4.1M, and Hampus Lindholm makes $6.5M over the next eight seasons. While the cap hit on those players that I just mentioned isn't bad, it's just an awkward amount of money for players of their caliber.

The Bruins may go on to win the Stanley Cup this year, but at the same time if they don't do it this year, I'm not sure when they'd get back to being at this level. The future of players like Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci are definitely in question. Lots of speculation can be had when it comes to those two players, and it seems like they could retire next season. If that's the case, expect Boston to regress a lot.

They're almost to the maximum salary cap and based on what they'll need to re-sign versus how much David Pastrnak will make on his new contract ($11.25M – 8 Years total), the numbers almost balance. At some point the Bruins are going to have to restructure their salary and allocate money in more effective ways. They have a few players locked up for a few years like Brad Marchand for two more seasons after this one, Pavel Zacha for four more after this year, Charlie McAvoy for another seven years, just to give a few examples.

The players on the Bruins with multi-years remaining on their contracts are worth rostering as they provide a nice floor for production across the categories outside of just your goals and assists, and a nice ceiling when it come to the main offensive categories. With the future of players like Bergeron and Krejci looking murky at the moment, expect other younger players to step up in larger ways once next season starts. This is a tremendous team when it comes to talent and they have the right players locked up to alright contracts. I expect them to regress heavily next season as a team, but when it comes to most of their players, they shouldn't take too much of a hit when it comes to their values.

Overall, the trade deadline day this year was a bit weaker in comparison to others, since most of the big trades already happened in the last few days and up to a week or more ago in some cases. That being said, the teams that got a jump on doing bigger trades ended up not having to pay the premium of "there aren't many players available who fit what we're looking for."


If you're looking to discuss all things hockey, you can find me on Twitter, @JamieMolloy_DH.