Friedman: Penguins trade was blocked under NHL rules.

It appears that an attempted deadline move from the Pittsburgh Penguins was shut down by the National Hockey League.

On Saturday night some of the National Hockey League's top insiders gathered for Hockey Night in Canada's weekly "Headlines" segment to discuss the latest news and happenings around the league. There were plenty of topics discussed but unsurprisingly with the National Hockey League's trade deadline less than 3 days away now the focus was on all the trade chatter that has been going on in and around the National Hockey League.

There were a number of teams and players discussed but perhaps the most interesting morsel of information during the entire segment came courtesy of Sportsnet's National Hockey League insider Elliotte Friedman. The veteran NHL reporter revealed that the Pittsburgh Penguins had attempted to acquire veteran forward Carl Hagelin from the Los Angeles Kings and in fact may have even had a deal in place to make the trade a reality, only to have the National Hockey League shut it all down.

The issue of contention here seems to stem from the fact that the Pittsburgh Penguins traded Hagelin to the Kings within the last 365 days. Now that in and of itself would not prevent the Penguins from acquiring Hagelin in another trade with the Kings, however the fact that they retained a portion of Hagelin's salary in the deal does in fact appear to have caused some issue with the collective bargaining agreement. According to Friedman due to the fact that the Penguins made the trade within the last calendar year and retained $250,000 of his yearly cap hit while doing so, they are ineligible to trade for Hagelin until a full year has passed since the previous trade. Effectively this would mean that the Penguins would have to wait until mid November of this year before making the deal, something that they, and especially the Los Angeles Kings, understandably are not interested in doing. 

As a result the Kings would instead go on to trade Hagelin for a third round pick in at this year's NHL Entry Draft as well as a conditional sixth round pick in 2020 from the Washington Capitals organization.