Kind of surprised we haven’t seen at least one trade this week
I'm not. The insane parity that we're seeing particularly in the wild card race in both conferences is casting a lot of doubt among many teams whether or not to sell. The buyers are pretty clear, there's a clear top 6 in each conference. In terms of sellers? It's literally one team in the east in Columbus and 4 in the west in Arizona, Chicago, Anaheim and San Jose. Kind of crazy that the entire league is heavily in the playoff race outside of 5 teams in, now, early March but that's where we are.
Hopefully a lot of this is fleshed out in the next week and a half but time is running out and it's starting to appear that it's going to be a harsh market for buyers because there's a ton of demand but precious little supply. The fly in the ointment is Calgary and, to a lesser extent, St. Louis, Nashville, Washington, Pittsburgh and Philly. All teams with a lot of pieces that buyers want but teams that are currently in or close to a playoff spot.
The one thing we know for almost certain is that Hanifin will be moved but maybe Calgary, lol, thinks they have a shot at a Cup run so they keep him then lose him for nothing in the summer. Wouldn't that be nice?
In any event, there's tons of uncertainty out there so I expect the bulk of the deals to occur late next week.