The Wild’s deadline outlook, the Oilers’ roster reckoning, and the biggest NHL storylines to watch in March
The Milano Cortina Olympics produced countless memorable moments and an agonizing amount of high drama as the U.S. won its first Olympic men’s gold in nearly 50 years.
Living legends Connor Hellebuyck and Connor McDavid added new achievements to their respective Hall-of-Fame resumes. Cult heroes like Samuel Hlavaj and Nick Olesen wriggled their way into the “barroom trivia” section of international hockey lore. Don’t take a breath now, though: we still have an NHL season to finish.
From the ranks of the victorious Americans, Matt Boldy, Brock Faber, Quinn Hughes, and Team USA architect Bill Guerin will be desperate to add to their international triumph with a Minnesota Wild team whose quest for a first Stanley Cup has quickly become urgent.
For the leaders of the vanquished Team Canada, there is no time to dwell on a near miss in Milan; McDavid’s Edmonton Oilers and Sidney Crosby’s Pittsburgh Penguins will each fight for their playoff lives in the weeks to come.
Read on for more on the difficult questions facing Minnesota, the Oilers’ never-ending quest for roster balance, the Pens’ chances sans an injured Crosby, and more around-the-league intrigue as the NHL season barrels full steam ahead towards the March 6 trade deadline and the playoff race that will follow.
The Wild are already all-in
Minnesota’s title hopes have changed drastically and for the better since star winger Kirill Kaprizov shook the loose change out of Guerin and owner Craig Leipold’s pockets back in September. The Wild would add a second superstar in Quinn Hughes only a few months after “the Thrill” inked his record-smashing extension, and will now have at least two cracks at the playoffs with Kaprizov, Hughes, Faber, Boldy, and starting goalie Filip Gustavsson on board. That’s a heck of a jumping-off point, but there’s more work for Guerin to do to turn all this positivity into silverware.
With player-friendly deals for grinders Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, and Yakov Trenin, as well as brawny D-man Jake Middleton, eating up a significant chunk of the salary cap (and with most of his top young players now in Vancouver via the Hughes trade), it’s hard to see how Guerin is going to supplement his stellar core both now and later. Greybeard wingers Vladimir Tarasenko, Mats Zuccarello, and Marcus Johansen (all UFAs on July 1) have had to provide all the secondary scoring for Minnesota, and the center depth beyond Joel Eriksson Ek is threadbare.
Guerin might have to push his chips in ahead of Friday’s trade deadline to increase the Wild’s odds in a likely showdown with the Dallas Stars that will send a top-five team packing in round one, even if that means dealing collegiate standout Charlie Stramel or excellent young goalie Jesper Wallstedt (14-6-4, .911 SV%). Further gutting his once-promising pipeline would be quite the commitment in Year One of Minnesota’s “Cup or bust” era, especially since Hughes can walk in 2027 if the Wild’s string of playoff failures drags on. It’s called “win now mode” for a reason, though; they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
Can the Crosby-less Pens survive a March meatgrinder?
Penguins head honcho Kyle Dubas is the hardest-working man in hockey. Dubas’s frenetic pursuit of hockey trades that return potentially useful castoffs and early-round picks to Pittsburgh has quickly turned what was once the NHL’s most stagnant team into one of its most optimistic. Dubas’s creativity was on full display when the one-time wunderkid turned inconsistent goalie Tristan Jarry, who cleared waivers just last season, into two useful NHL players in their 20s (netminder Stuart Skinner and defenseman Sam Girard) and a couple of second-round picks.
Oh, and the Penguins are winning. Pittsburgh is in second place in the Metropolitan Division with the third-best goal difference (+30) in the conference. Erik Karlsson is driving play on a solid top pairing, Evgeni Malkin (47 points in 44 GP) is partying like it’s 2009, and free agent dart throw Anthony Mantha (21 goals, 19.4 S%, 14:54 ATOI) is one of the most efficient scorers in the NHL. The only thing that could kill the buzz around the Penguins now is … a four-week injury absence for captain/franchise savior Sidney Crosby ahead of the toughest stretch of the season (1st in remaining strength of schedule).
Does Dubas have another trick up his sleeve? Like, say, dealing Skinner (Pittsburgh has goalies to burn) for one of the Girard/Tommy Novak-esque upside plays he loves so much? Can Malkin, who’s operated on Novak’s wing for over a month, lead the offense while his buddy’s out? Outside of Philadelphia and New York, the hockey world is crossing its collective fingers that Pittsburgh can hold on in a crowded Eastern Conference to earn Sid another crack at the grail. A final playoff tilt between Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin’s Washington Capitals is not out of the realm of possibility, either.
Have the Oilers finally found a roster jam they can’t wiggle out of?
It’s hard to build a team around superstars on their second or third contracts. That’s the nature of the salary cap world. That job is harder still when, in addition to paying Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, and Evan Bouchard, a team like the Oilers is also stuck with Darnell Nurse, an altogether useful defenseman who’s never come close to justifying his boat anchor of a contract. Somehow, Edmonton pulled it off all the same over the past two seasons, coming within a game or two of the Stanley Cup after each of them. Now, though, even with McDavid in superhero mode, the Oilers’ cap balancing act is reaching a tipping point.
GM Stan Bowman’s inability to identify productive veteran depth has put the middling Oil, who are just three points clear of ninth place in the West, in a precarious position. In addition to flubbing the Dylan Holloway/Philip Broberg RFA saga in the summer of ‘24, Bowman has consistently whiffed on his down-lineup recruits. Trent Frederic’s production has cratered (three goals, four points in 58 GP) in the first season of a baffling eight-year pact. Like Jeff Skinner before him, Andrew Mangiapane has been deemed surplus to requirements by stern bench boss Kris Knoblauch and cleared waivers this afternoon. Adam Henrique, whose contract was admittedly engineered by Bowman’s boss Jeff Jackson, no longer has the legs to play matchup center.
With a shaky Jarry onboard (.829 SV% since a 4-0-1 start with EDM), the Oilers are struggling to ice a cap-compliant roster, let alone improve. So, how do they get the big, scoring winger, the reliable right-shot defenseman, and the bottom-six center they need? How do they get even one of those assets? The Oilers aren’t as bereft of trade chips as most all-in teams, but with cap space measured in the thousands, they might need a better doctor than Bowman to perform roster surgery this delicate ahead of Friday’s deadline.
How deep will the Leafs’ deadline reset run?
A little over a week ago, Toronto Maple Leafs’ captain Auston Matthews was busy celebrating Olympic gold with his American teammates. By Saturday night, though, his Leafs had already finished dropping their third consecutive division game (they’ve been outscored by a combined total of 14-5) since league play resumed on Feb. 25.
Life comes at you fast. Too fast, apparently, for the lumbering Maple Leafs, whose effort in a 5-2 beating by the hated Senators was called “fairly embarrassing” by their captain, who, despite a five-game point streak, has not scored an NHL goal since Jan. 29.
It’s been a fairly embarrassing year in Toronto, where losses in eight of their last 11 have sent the Maple Leafs plummeting to last place in the Atlantic. Breaking up with Mitch Marner seems to have ended the Leafs’ playoff woes after all, if only because they won’t make the playoffs to begin with. If GM Brad Treliving likes his job, he’s going to have to load up on future assets that will help him reload around Matthews and William Nylander, and fast.
That means veteran UFAs Scott Laughton and Bobby McMann are as good as gone. How many Maple Leafs will follow them out the door? Blue-line puckmover Oliver Ekman-Larsson (8 G, 35 P, 20:44 ATOI) is one of the few Leafs enjoying a fine season. Anthony Stolarz’s struggles (3.51 GAA, .885 SV%) can only drop his value so much in a bear market for goalies.
Will Treliving make either veteran, both of whom are signed through at least 2028, available as part of a wider roster shakeup? What about Nic Roy, whose size, playoff experience, and comfort at center would drive his price tag higher than it has any right to be? Shipping off so many players he had a hand in acquiring might be a bad look for Treliving. But it won’t be as bad as running back a slow-skating, low-scoring lineup in 2026-27.
Can the Panthers bounce back … and do they care to?
The Florida Panthers have played a lot of extra hockey over the past three seasons. Members of the Cats who have been on board for all three of their runs to the Stanley Cup have now logged over 60 postseason games on top of the usual NHL grind, and it’s beginning to catch up with them on the ice. Sure, the Panthers have now reached such a level of success that the regular season isn’t much more to them than a prelude to the playoffs, but they still have to get there. With Aleksander Barkov out for the season with an ACL injury and legendary netminder Sergei Bobrovsky running out of tread on his tires (career-worst .872 SV%) at age 37, that’s proving difficult; Florida’s 5-4 loss in Long Island last night left them eight points adrift of the eighth seed with just 22 games left to play.
That’s quite the hole, one that even a healthy Matthew Tkachuk (5 P in 3 GP since break) will be hard-pressed to help them dig out of. Could the champs, whose rough-and-tumble style has come to epitomize winning hockey in the 2020s, really take a knee? Bobrovsky is their only big-name UFA, and, as wrong as it will feel to consummate competitors like Tkachuk, Brad Marchand, and Sam Bennett, getting a loaded, if beat-up, core healthy and rested ahead of 2026-27 could take priority over what’s quickly becoming a far-fetched playoff chase.
Though GM Bill Zito’s (realistic) attractive trade chips if he chooses to reclaim some assets are probably limited to grinder A.J. Greer (11 G, 148 hits) and perhaps Swiss Army Knife Evan Rodrigues, the act of losing itself could end up benefitting the Panthers; they keep their 2026 first-rounder, conditionally traded to Chicago in last year’s Seth Jones deal, if they finish in the bottom-ten. We know how hot Florida can get when it counts (remember the spring of ‘23?), but with so little runway left in the season, easing off the gas might better situate the ailing Cats to add a third Cup once Barkov gets back on the ice.
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