Who is the biggest sleeper on the trade market?

This has been a week for the ages on the NHL trade market.

Between Simon Nemec, Jordan Kyrou, Brady Tkachuk, William Eklund, Alex Tuch, Bowen Byram and Jack Drury, numerous impactful players have changed hands this week as GMs are desperate to fortify their rosters ahead of the start of an extremely weak free agent class.

Based on reporting from insiders, there could be several other big names moved ahead of the draft, with Matthew Knies of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Alexander Nikishin of the Carolina Hurricanes currently on the market, to name only a couple.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by Daily Faceoff managing editor Matt Larkin to discuss who may be an under-the-radar big name to be the next to change teams in a blockbuster deal.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Let’s transition over to your new trade board up now at DailyFaceoff.com, and I guess I’ll just throw you sort of a very similar question to my first free agent one. Like when you’re putting together your trade board, who’s the one name you pause on and go like, “Man, I’m fascinated to see how that plays out?”

Matt Larkin: eah, there are a couple. I think a sleeper is Shane Wright… I would like to see what he could do on a team that gives him a chance. But my actual answer is Elias Petterson, and it’s $11.6 million. It’s a hard contract to make work, but I think in terms of the assets you’re giving up, you’re maybe doing Vancouver a little bit of a favor in that case. So maybe that brings his acquisition cost down, and I just think he’s 27 years old. He can still really shoot the puck. He’s a good two-way player. He’s lost his speed, I know, but he’s still talented. He’s not that far removed from being a 100-point player. And I just, I have kind of a yearning to see what he could do, literally anywhere else. We’ve only ever seen him as a Vancouver Canuck, and I just think in the right situation he could blossom again. He’s not that old. So to me, he’s someone that I’m really fascinated by. I know it’s not an easy deal to make work with that money, but if someone can do it, maybe they unlock him again.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…