‘There’s lots of unhappy GMs’ pushing for trades at the moment!

A minor trade took place last night as the Edmonton Oilers acquired defenseman Chris Wideman from the Ottawa Senators in return for a pick. This got NHL insider Bob McKenzie thinking about the trade market and how there is quite a bit of trade activity coming before the holiday roster freeze next month.

In his analysis during a Thursday afternoon radio hit on Vancouver’s TSN 1040 following the Wideman trade, McKenzie revealed that there is not only a lot of trade chatter, there is also quite a bit of anger coming from the general managers across the league. 

“I think there’s lots of teams trying,” explained McKenzie. “It’s always hard to predict whether or not we’re going to get results on trade talk. I think trade talk has ramped up significantly across the league.

“But you can cut it both ways. There’s some people who would say, ‘See how tight and compressed the league is, everybody separated by about five points?’ Does that help or hinder the trade front and the trade talk because are people hesitant to pull the trigger and shake things up because even if you’re on the wrong side of the five points, below the playoff line, it’s only five points or three points or two points, and do you really need to make a trade. Maybe you should hang in longer with the group you’ve got, and just let them come together and things will work out.

“Or do you look at it and say, ‘Man, things are so tight here we need to do something - we need a point of difference. We need to shake things up and try to be that group that vaults out of this soft middle ground that just about everybody in the National Hockey League seems to be in.’

“I don’t really have an answer to that, other than I know that there’s a lot of general managers talking about a lot of different deals. And especially a GM like Jim Rutherford has been trying for a while to do some stuff, and he obviously did with Hagelin for Pearson, and he may not be finished on that front.

“But there’s lots of unhappy GMs, whether they’re in L.A. or Pittsburgh or Chicago, some of the venerable teams that have been ‘salary cap dynasty teams’ are in the mode to try and get something done.”

Teams have less than a month to make moves before the holiday roster freeze, which runs from December 19 through December 27. Sometimes, people make decision based on emotions and not on logic and the lingering anger could lead to such a decision. 

Let's see what happens...