This week with what is hopefully an interesting Trade Deadline Day, we are going to spend some time setting expectations for potential fantasy impact.

To do this, we are going to be taking a look back at the 24-25 deadline and see what kinds of impacts it had on players who were at least marginally fantasy relevant during the season. As far as process goes, I used Frozen Tools' custom reports feature on the Big Board Reports to grab data for individual players prior to the trade deadline, and then a second report for post deadline. I exported those reports and pulled the data forward. For the purposes of this article, I am specifically looking at overall time on ice, percent of the team's power play, and their 82-game scoring pace. I also grabbed a list of players who moved teams in the seven days leading up to the trade deadline. With all of that I was able to look at pre/post deadline data for the players who moved during that period. I further sorted by players who were at least a little more fantasy relevant. Generally, these players had a 50-ish point pace either pre- or post-deadline, though with some of the D we were a little bit more flexible. Overall, we ended up with 16 players in the sample.

On average the 16 players lost about a minute of overall ice time, and a five percent share of the team's power-play post-move, while their point paces remained about the same. Looking at players a little more individually though we see that of the 16 players, 25 percent of them saw an increase in their point paces, and 25 percent of them remained the same. That means about 50 percent of fantasy relevant players traded at the deadline lost value after the trade.

To break these players down a bit though here are a few players whose point pace improved.

It is an interesting list here. These are players who moved on to playoff teams (Charlie Coyle to Colorado, Yanni Gourde to Tampa Bay, Andrei Kuzmenko to Los Angeles, Dylan Cozens to Ottawa). Generally, we would expect those players to play smaller roles for a playoff team than they were playing for a non-playoff team. That does kind of hold true for total time on ice, we see that decrease in the cases of Coyle and Cozens, but Kuzmenko and Gourde increased overall. In either case, they are still generally seeing over 15 minutes of ice time, and except for Coyle, who was over 16 minutes. What is particularly interesting though is that all of them maintained or increased their share of power-play time. Those things taken together indicate that yes, these were maybe role adds, but role players that were utilized in a more offensive way than on their previous teams. It isn't difficult to see why they were able to increase their production.

On the flip side the table below is a selection of the players who performed worse after their trades.

This one really is a mix. Everyone on this list also moved to a playoff team so it probably isn't too much of a surprise that these players, by and large, all decreased their overall time on ice. Seth Jones is a bit of an exception, but the expectation really was he was coming in to be a number one D. As far as power play goes, Seth Jones, Oliver Bjorkstrand, and Casey Mittelstadt actually increased their share of the power play time even though they were all moving to playoff teams. Those players then have a lot in common with the group above. Mixed total time on ice, but improved power-play time, and yet these three could not manage to sustain their pre-trade paces.

The remaining players – Mikko Rantanen, Brad Marchand, Fabian Zetterlund, and Jake Walman – lost both overall time on ice, and specifically power-play time so it isn't much of a surprise as to why their point paces declined.

The final group, the ones who essentially sustained their pace, are perhaps the least interesting. Not only did they sustain their pace, but their role essentially stayed very similar pre to post trade. Their overall time on ice and power-play share remained pretty constant.

This is a review we have done several times on Frozen Tool Forensics, and the takeaway is often the same. There is usually a lot of hype around players who move to a new teams, and managers often rush to grab them. We certainly do have examples of it working out pretty well and managers seem to be worried about missing the next Sam Bennett, but we usually don't see huge improvements for players.

In past years the sweet spot has been finding a player who is moving to a non-playoff team and who is given a big opportunity by that new team. There weren't too many examples of that in 24-25 so we were left with role players who found themselves in a bit better of a position for the new playoff team. Still, even in cases when that happened, production only improved about half of the time.

Even looking at the players who did improve, they essentially went from non-fantasy relevance to possibly relevant depending on your format. So, is it worth taking a flyer if you have a free add? Sure, but based on analyzing 2024-25 about 75 percent of the time the player will perform at their current level or worse after all is said and done – and typically the better the player the bigger the drop off.

That is all for this week.

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