Keep an eye on Lightning, Red Wings, Stars heading into the Trade Deadline

While the hockey world is caught up in Olympic hockey, the trade talks are expected to pick up right away when the roster freeze ends on February 23rd, as the deadline is only a couple weeks after that on March 6th. So when the roster freeze ends next week, who should we expect to see active on the trade market?

David Pagnotta joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about which teams could be the most active in the coming weeks before the Trade Deadline.

David Pagnotta: Out east, I look at Tampa. There was a lot of talk about Tampa looking to add up front. We know they’ve got a little bit of interest in bringing Blake Coleman back, but they can add on that blue line. I think that’s something that Julien Brisebois and the team would like to do.

Victor Hedman tweaked something in the warmup yesterday and he wasn’t able to play. So how is that going to affect things moving forward? He already missed a bunch of time with the Bolts leading into the Stadium Series and Olympics, so they obviously want to keep tabs on that. But the right side of that d-core has been something that they’ve been looking to add and I wouldn’t be surprised if Brisebois pulls that off.

Now one of the things he did tell me during the Stadium Series was that if they make a move, they don’t just want it to be for this season. They view it as adding now and impacting the roster moving forward. So to me that means somebody with term or at least somebody controllable. So I look at Tampa in that respect. I’m curious to see what they end up doing on the back end.

Detroit‘s looking to make some moves as well and looking to also add on the blue line, but also up front. I’d keep tabs on them.

And we haven’t seen anything out of Dallas yet. We obviously know about Quinn Hughes going to Minnesota and they’re still looking for a center, but Dallas hasn’t pulled the trigger on a deal yet. We saw them do it early last season, on February 1st they made that deal with San Jose, bringing in Granlund and Ceci. That’s still something that Jim Nill would like to do.

Now, obviously Nill’s with Dubas and Armstrong and everybody out there in Milan, but he’s still working the phones a little bit and that’s going to amplify once he gets back. And I think Jim Nill is certainly somebody that would like to pull the trigger and add both. They’ve got a lot of cap space to play with.

You can watch the full episode here…