Making sense of the NHL trade landscape after a seismic Tuesday

Jun 24, 2026, 14:35 EDT

Making sense of the NHL trade landscape after a seismic Tuesday

Credit: David Gonzales-Imagn Images

The salary cap is skyrocketing, expansion has watered down the talent pool, and this year’s crop of unrestricted free agents is the thinnest in recent memory.

In short: All the stars have aligned for the NHL’s trade market to heat up like never before, and we saw ample evidence of that on Tuesday.

Eight teams, four blockbuster deals. In the span of less than six hours, the hockey world tilted on its axis to a degree we haven’t seen in nearly a decade — at least, not since that fateful day in 2016, when P.K. Subban was traded for Shea Weber, Taylor Hall was swapped for Adam Larsson, and then Steven Stamkos extended with the Tampa Bay Lightning, all just 23 minutes apart.

That flurry of activity occurred under similar circumstances, with league revenues increasing, a new round of expansion on the horizon, and a particularly unremarkable crop of players set to hit free agency. But this time around, it feels like the NHL’s 32 general managers might take things to the extreme. The four deals we saw on Tuesday may only represent the beginning of a seismic shift in the league’s marketplace.

This year won’t be a one-off. Get ready to see fewer star players in free agency, and more of them on the trade block. Four blockbusters in one day might not be the new norm, but it wouldn’t be too surprising if this Trade Tuesday serves as the starting point for a new-look NHL arms race.

You can scratch Simon Nemec, William Eklund, Jordan Kyrou, and Bowen Byram off of your trade boards. A couple of those names might’ve been on there for a long time, but all four of them are now accounted for on the NHL’s trade rolls. News of the Nemec trade first broke just after 3:00 p.m. ET on Tuesday; the Byram deal was the last to become public, shortly after 8:00 p.m. ET. Here at Daily Faceoff, we published grades for the Kyrou and Byram deals, but all four were easily of the magnitude to warrant significant in-depth coverage. The news faucet just kept pouring, and hardly anyone around the hockey world managed to keep up.

Wednesday may well bring more activity, with rumors involving Alexander Nikishin and Morgan Rielly, among others, already beginning to percolate. But why bother speculating about things that may yet happen when there’s so much still to say about the four moves that already did?

The Nemec deal is a fascinating bet for both the Calgary Flames and New Jersey Devils, the latter of whom moved off a No. 2 overall pick after just four years in their organization. In return, the Devils received a pretty hefty haul, headlined by a pair of future first-round picks. The Flames are betting big on Nemec becoming a true difference-maker for them, but they needed to consolidate assets and prioritize quality over quantity.

Not even two hours after the Nemec trade first leaked, news came out that the San Jose Sharks were sending Eklund to the Ottawa Senators as part of a deal for the No. 9 pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. The Sens needed to pivot after their previous blockbuster deal, in which they sent captain Brady Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers; Eklund had shown plenty of promise in San Jose, but his departure frees up a spot for top prospect Ivar Stenberg, who could easily become a Shark on Friday via the No. 2 pick.

Almost immediately after the Eklund trade was finalized, the St. Louis Blues sent Jordan Kyrou to the Washington Capitals. The Blues got an absolute haul in return: Connor McMichael, prospect Milton Gastrin, and the No. 16 pick in this year’s draft. The Capitals are undoubtedly banking on Kyrou returning to his previous form as a three-time 30-goal scorer, but after a season in which McMichael and Kyrou both had the same number of points, it sure feels like the Blues got the better end of this deal.

And, of course, the final deal of the day saw Byram go from the Buffalo Sabres to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for a monstrous package of the No. 4 and 45 picks, as well as defenseman Louis Crevier. To top it all off, Buffalo got Chicago to take on the full freight of Jordan Greenway’s $4 million cap hit in the deal. It’s one of the biggest fleecings in recent memory, as well as the first instance of a team knowingly trading a top-five draft pick in nearly two decades.

The deals came fast and furious on Tuesday, with fans around the league barely getting the chance to process one before news of another came down the pipe. The similarities between all four deals are clear; the most likely outcomes for the teams involved are all over the place. In some cases, the motivations of some of these teams may not become fully apparent until after the draft comes and goes this weekend.

Either way, it’s shaping up to be a remarkable offseason in the NHL. At least, it feels that way now — in a few years’ time, this might just be the new normal. But in the new age of player empowerment and escalating revenues across the board, this sort of chaos is inevitable. Players once thought to be off-limits will become the most valuable leaguewide currency.

As teams become less and less constrained by the salary cap, fewer players will be compelled to test the UFA market in search of bigger paydays. But that doesn’t mean they’ll remain content in their present circumstances, nor does it mean teams will be any less aggressive in their attempts to find upgrades. It just means that more and more players will become available in trades, often significantly earlier than we’ve come to expect. Most of the players who changed teams on Tuesday would’ve needed to wait many years before they could’ve left their previous clubs as UFAs. In this new landscape, that will continue to matter less — both because players feel more emboldened to seek changes, but also because teams have increasing financial capacity to prevent players from hitting the open market.

And for those of us who find “silly season” to be the most compelling section of the NHL’s calendar, all we get to do is sit back and watch everything unfold.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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