In a salary cap world, teams could no longer wait for the Stanley Cup to make trades
A look at why there was a flurry of NHL activity on Wednesday.
NHL GMs unofficially decided the offseason started today.
The Los Angeles Kings traded Pierre-Luc Dubois to the Washington Capitals in a one-for-one deal for Darcy Kuemper.
The San Jose Sharks claimed Barclay Goodrow on waivers from the New York Rangers.
Jacob Markstrom was traded from the Calgary Flames to the New Jersey Devils, flipping him for a 2025 first-round pick and defenseman Kevin Bahl.
And the Dallas Stars traded Ty Dellandrea to the San Jose Sharks for a fourth-round pick in 2025.
It doesn’t matter that the Stanley Cup still has yet to be awarded, with nine days before the NHL draft teams were done waiting to start working on cap flexibility.
For the Kings the Dubois era was a massive failure, but they somehow got out of his contract that pays $8.5 million per season until 2031. DuBois had a no-movement clause that was going to kick in on July 1, so Los Angeles had to move quickly if they were going to ever soften the blow of a failed deal.
Goodrow was actually decent for the Rangers in the playoffs, but with his $3.641 million cap hit, running through 2027, they needed to find a way to get out of it. The Sharks, as the NHL’s worst team this season, will have top waiver priority until late October, so this felt more like a “future considerations” trade which are no longer allowed by the CBA.
Calgary had been looking to move Markstrom for a while now and the Devils desperately needed a goalie. For the Flames it was time to move their crease succession plan to Dustin Wolf, who has been the best goalie outside of the NHL the past three seasons — ironically a title that Markstrom once held himself when he was playing for the San Antonio Rampage.
Dallas trading Dellandrea is surprising, but understandable. While the return for a former first-round pick feels light on paper, Dellandrea wasn’t much more than a 13th forward for the Stars and he’s an RFA with a $945,000 qualifying offer.
He was likely going to cost close to a million against the cap this season, and the Stars have internally had discussions about being smarter about the budget with depth forwards, especially since they’ll be on the hook for $2 million of Joe Pavelski’s performance bonuses that rolled over from this season.
Look at it this way, with Pavelski retiring the Stars opened up a roster spot for Mavrik Bourque. By trading away Dellandrea and not worrying about his RFA deal, they opened up the salary space for Bourque.
In the long run that leaves more room for Dallas in its quest to re-sign Matt Duchene or Chris Tanev.
It’s really all about the cap right now, and after respecting the sanctity of the Stanley Cup for long enough, teams had to act in their best interest.