Are the Canes and Oilers cooked? Is the Cup headed

Greg WyshynskiMar 11, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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The 2025 NHL trade deadline had a bit of everything: a superstar traded twice, a beloved captain sent to an archrival and first-round picks treated with the sacrosanctity of samples at a mall food court.

Something else the deadline had: overreactions, to the trades that were made, the teams that stayed quiet and the aftermath of those decisions.

Here are 10 overreactions to the 2025 NHL trade deadline that we judge to be absolutely reasonable or totally misguided.

Carolina botched the deadline

The Carolina Hurricanes made a blockbuster trade in January when they acquired Colorado Avalanche star Mikko Rantanen and Chicago Blackhawks winger Taylor Hall, shipping out leading scorer Martin Necas, forward Jack Drury a 2025 second-rounder and 2026 fourth-rounder. They were unable to sign Rantanen, who struggled offensively after arriving in Raleigh, to a long-term contract extension.

So they turned around and flipped him to Dallas for 22-year-old forward Logan Stankoven, first-round picks in 2026 and 2028 and third-round selections in 2026 and 2027.

The Hurricanes went from acquiring the missing ingredient for a Stanley Cup championship to punting on their season, their trade process with Dallas having been so prolonged that they didn’t have the salary cap certainty to acquire other players they targeted at the deadline. Meanwhile, after failing to convince elite players in Jake Guentzel and Rantanen to sign extensions, Carolina’s brand as a player destination is tarnished.

The verdict: OVERREACTION.

Let’s talk about some concepts. The first is “recency bias.”

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Thanks to his background — no other NHL general manager has a doctorate in chemistry from California Berkeley, at last check — Eric Tulsky has been lauded as a genius. The Hurricanes have made “4D chess” moves during his time in the front office, with Tulsky having ascended to the general manager’s chair this season. The team’s initial trade for Rantanen received an A-plus from ESPN. But Tulsky’s deadline was given a D from beat writer Cory Lavalette of The Athletic, who wrote “the acquisition, courting and departure of Mikko Rantanen will be seen as a stain on the Hurricanes.”

There are a lot of critics questioning Tulsky after moving Rantanen so soon. That wasn’t helped by his admission that the process took so long on Dallas’ end — signing Rantanen and completing the deal — that the Hurricanes missed using their new draft capital to acquire trade deadline targets, which left fans baffled.

Remove Rantanen from the equation, and what the Hurricanes sent out and what they got back would be a win for Tulsky’s team. There are a lot of folks around the NHL who believe Stankoven is primed to become Seth Jarvis 2.0 in Carolina. But you can’t just leave Rantanen out, which brings us to our second concept: the sunk cost fallacy.

The Hurricanes acquired Rantanen with the hopes of winning the Cup with him and having him sign a long-term extension. Both objectives weren’t guaranteed — the Hurricanes have their lowest points percentage over their past five seasons and they only knew Rantanen was “open” to signing when they acquired him, not that he would. That was OK with their general manager.

“If the team was already winning [Stanley] Cup after Cup after Cup, maybe that would be a time to be conservative, but we haven’t gotten to where we want to be yet. Ultimately, that means you’re taking some risks,” Tulsky said.

It started to become clear that it wasn’t about the contract for Rantanen. Raleigh wasn’t “home,” according to Tulsky. So then the decision was whether to keep Rantanen for a run at the Cup, knowing he was a one-and-done, or flip him at the deadline. Tulsky said both were viable options. The latter became the more obvious choice when he saw the offers.

Trading him is “a loss for the current year,” Tulsky said. The other option was to consider what the Hurricanes gave up for Rantanen — the aforementioned “sunk cost” — and double-down on him as a playoff rental. Instead, they opted for an outstanding young player who better fits their system, two firsts and two thirds, and not having $13 million-plus in cap space committed annually to a player who might have overly benefitted from having Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar on the ice with him for the majority of his career.

The Hurricanes took a risk. They still ended up with a reward. And as bad as the optics are for the franchise and Tulsky, there should still be utmost faith that Carolina is far from done as a contender — because of what’s there, what’s on the way and what they’re now able to acquire.

Rantanen should have just signed with the Avalanche

Dallas and Carolina completed their trade after Rantanen agreed to an eight-year contract worth $96 million that has an average annual value (AAV) of $12 million. ESPN’s Kevin Weekes reported that the Hurricanes offered Rantanen a deal with an average annual value somewhere between $13 million and $14 million. The catalyst for all of this was the contract impasse between Colorado and Rantanen that led to his trade … and in hindsight, Rantanen was better off just taking that deal.

The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION.

The Avalanche had a range for Rantanen. The AAV on an extension would come in behind that of star Nathan MacKinnon ($12.6 million) but above that of New York Rangers star Artemi Panarin ($11,642,857), who is currently the league’s highest-paid winger.

Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman said a $11.75 million AAV was the number floating around the league for what the Avalanche were offering. At the time, there was speculation Rantanen was seeking in the neighborhood of the $14 million AAV that Leon Draisaitl received from the Oilers last year, as the two players share an agent.

As ESPN’s Rachel Doerrie noted, when three teams say you’re not a $14 million AAV player, the market says you’re not a $14 million AAV player.

The tax advantages in Texas mean Rantanen will take home more cash on this deal. But assuming the numbers are correct, he forced the Avalanche into trading him over roughly $250,000 against the salary cap annually. That’s the cost of leaving MacKinnon’s wing and Makar on the power play, the cost of having his life uprooted by a trade and the cost of ending his extremely successful time in Colorado.

The Dallas Stars will win the Stanley Cup

After the Rantanen trade, the Stars rocketed up to become co-favorites for the Stanley Cup along with the Florida Panthers on ESPN BET. The team that made the Western Conference finals for two straight seasons added the fourth-best playoff scorer since 2021 in an attempt to put them over the top. In the process, they made an already elite team (third in the NHL overall) into a pending Stanley Cup champion.

The verdict: OVERREACTION.

Look, nothing would be more satisfying than to see the Stars win the Stanley Cup after I predicted they would before the season, fully knowing they’d end up upgrading from Logan Stankoven to Mikko Rantanen. (Please do not look that up.)

But there are two reasons I can’t quite yet start the engraving process for Dallas.

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The first is as obvious as the standings: The Western Conference is ThunderDome. The Jets, challenging for the league lead all season. The brilliant brutality of the Golden Knights. Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in Edmonton, who came within a win of the Cup last season. The Wild and Kings could be tough outs. And then the real problem: Rantanen’s old mates in Denver.

Entering Saturday, there’s a 70% chance the Stars finish second in the Central and a 62% chance the Avalanche finish third. Colorado improved its already potent team throughout the season, solving problems in goal and at center. Dallas’ opening round could be a disaster. And it doesn’t get all much easier as the path continues.

The other reason is the back end. Obviously, winning the Rantanen sweepstakes reprioritized things for Dallas at the deadline. But the Stars could have used another veteran defenseman, not only given the load the current group is carrying because of injuries but in looking forward to the postseason battles they’ll wage.

The Chris Tanev trade last season was an ideal one. Though a player like that might not have been in the cards at this deadline, some quality defensive depth would have helped. Perhaps as a safety net for a young defenseman such as Lian Bichsel. Perhaps so they don’t have to rely on the Matt Dumba and Brendan Smith pairing (46.7 expected goals percentage). Getting Cody Ceci from the Sharks in the Mikael Granlund trade helped to that end, but some extra reinforcement was needed.

The Stars won their first game with Mikko Rantanen, right, in the lineup — and he chipped in an empty-net goal to seal the deal. Jeff Vinnick/NHLI via Getty Images

Brock Nelson was the best “final piece” move

New York Islanders GM Lou Lamoriello finally said goodbye to one of his aging veterans, trading Nelson to the Colorado Avalanche. A member of Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off, Nelson is a tremendous 200-foot center who’s solid defensively and can score over 30 goals in a season. The Avalanche have been searching for a solution at No. 2 center since Nazem Kadri signed with Calgary after Colorado’s Stanley Cup win in 2022. No team at the deadline found a better solution for their biggest question.

The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION.

The center position was overall thin at this year’s deadline. Nelson was the best one who moved to a contender, better than Scott Laughton (Toronto), Yanni Gourde (Tampa Bay) and Charlie Coyle, who joined him with the Avalanche.

When you expand to other positions, how many players click into place like Nelson as the No. 2 center in Colorado behind MacKinnon? The only one who comes close is Brandon Carlo as blue-line beef in Toronto, theoretically giving Morgan Rielly the partner he has needed. But that’s not on the level of what Nelson could give the Avs. He’s like if a second-line center were created in a lab, right down to the 52.8% faceoff winning percentage.

Boston Bruins fans’ hearts ached as they watched their team trade away captain Brad Marchand at the deadline. He was a player whose talent, tenacious play and comportment perfectly encapsulated the Bostonian aesthetic. That he was traded to the Florida Panthers, Boston’s most hated recent tormenters, was hurt even more.

But for many fans, the real insult to injury was that he was traded for only a conditional second-round selection — in 2027! — despite being a star, a leader and a champion.

The verdict: OVERREACTION.

As is typical with seemingly underwhelming returns, there was a bunch happening under the surface here.

Speculation was that a slew of Western Conference contenders were seeking to acquire Marchand, the Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings and Edmonton Oilers among them. But ESPN’s Emily Kaplan reported that the trade market was much, much smaller than that: Marchand had family considerations and wanted to stay on the East Coast.

Florida made sense, not only as a defending Stanley Cup champion but because two of his former Bruins teammates, Gregory Campbell and Shawn Thornton, are members of the Panthers’ hockey operations staff.

With a market limited by Marchand’s preferred destinations, the Bruins retained 50% of his salary and worked a conditional second-rounder out of the Panthers, a team that has traded its share of picks in the past few seasons. The conditional second-round draft pick will become a 2027 or 2028 first-round draft pick “if Florida wins two rounds of the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs and Marchand appears in at least 50% of the team’s playoff games.” Given their consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup Final, and Marchand’s expected recovery from an upper-body injury, that’s a reasonable assumption.

If it ends up being first-rounder, given Marchand’s age, injury, expiring contract and limited trade scope, the Bruins did well here. Maybe not “re-sign the heart and soul of your team to a reasonable three-year contract to avoid having to trade him” well, but well enough.

Brad Marchand on the Florida Panthers still seems a little strange to see. Courtesy of the Florida Panthers

Boston is in a rebuild now

Bruins management had signaled that its team would not be adding at the deadline after a disappointing regular season. The level of dealing the Bruins did was still shocking.

Sure, many anticipated that center Trent Frederic and forward Justin Brazeau would be traded, having been mainstays on pre-deadline trade boards. But then the Bruins traded longtime center Charlie Coyle (Colorado) and defenseman Brandon Carlo (Toronto), before sending their beloved captain Brad Marchand to the Panthers. Has a rebuild in Boston officially started?

The verdict: OVERREACTION.

What did the Bruins trade yesterday? A 36-year-old Marchand. A 32-year-old Coyle, who returned a 26-year-old Casey Mittelstadt. A 28-year-old Carlo, who gained Toronto’s second-best prospect (Fraser Minten) and a first-round pick.

GM Don Sweeney talked about finding “another wave” of players, and started that process with these trades. They join a team with a sturdy foundation of three players: David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Swayman, all signed through 2029-30.

For better or worse, “rebuilding” is not in the DNA of the franchise. Sweeney said nothing Friday that even hinted at it happening.

“We didn’t burn it down,” he said. “You have to have a little bit of a step back at times. Did we know this morning that we’d end up making all of these moves? No. But we were prepared if the things that we liked were presented.”

The Bruins weren’t a contender this season, and might not be in the near term. But it’s clear that Boston sees a path back to contention without a total teardown. Now they have some assets and considerably more cap space to start down that path.

Washington, Winnipeg are strictly “regular-season elite”

The Capitals and Jets didn’t make too many waves at the trade deadline. Washington acquired winger Anthony Beauvillier from the Penguins. The Jets added winger Brandon Tanev and defenseman Luke Schenn.

Perhaps they should have taken bigger swings: Despite these teams passing first in the league back and forth all season, there aren’t many believers that the Caps or Jets will end up winning the Stanley Cup. ESPN BET has the Capitals with the sixth-shortest odds to win the Cup, and the Jets have the eighth-shortest odds.

The verdict: OVERREACTION.

It’s understandable why these teams aren’t earning more respect, because some believe the past is prologue. The Capitals were quickly swept out by the Rangers in the first round last postseason.

But this isn’t the same Capitals team. They added Pierre-Luc Dubois, Jakob Chychrun and Logan Thompson since then, and all have been tremendous. Aliaksei Protas has leveled up. And rather than looking like a fading star the way he did against the Rangers, Alex Ovechkin is scoring more than a point per game, and poised to break Wayne Gretzky’s all-time goals record this season. The Capitals are the league’s top offensive team and are in the top five in defense.

The Jets have admitted themselves that regular-season success means nothing if they can’t get it done in the playoffs. The past two years, they haven’t: Winnipeg was eliminated in five games in the first round both times, first by the Golden Knights and then by the Avalanche.

The Jets are top three offensively and the best defensive team in the NHL thanks to Connor Hellebuyck, who is poised to win a second straight Vezina Trophy. While they’ve run back much of the same roster as last postseason, they have a different coach in Scott Arniel, who has led this team to the top of the league.

Underestimate either of them in the playoffs at your own risk. All they do is win.

By not getting a goalie, Edmonton blew its Cup chance

The Oilers came within one victory of a Stanley Cup championship last season. Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid are hungry to hoist the Cup for the first time, but Edmonton’s decision to not upgrade its shaky goaltending (17th in team save percentage) is going to inevitably cost it the opportunity. Both Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard have played below expected this season.

The verdict: OVERREACTION.

The Oilers made it all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final despite atrocious goaltending. They had the worst team 5-on-5 save percentage for teams that advanced past the first round. Skinner was famously benched in the second round. But the beleaguered goalie was rarely the reason why Edmonton lost in the postseason — heck, in Game 7 against the Panthers, he had an expected goals-against of 1.63.

Edmonton has shown it can win a series or three with Skinner. But the bigger question in assessing this reaction: Who should they have acquired? Anaheim’s John Gibson, an injury risk with a sizable cap hit they’d have to absorb? Karel Vejmelka re-signed with Utah. Everyone else available wouldn’t have been much of an improvement over Skinner. In fact, the only goalie that moved at the deadline was Petr Mrazek.

Oilers GM Stan Bowman put it this way: It’s less about the goalies than the team in front of them. “We’re trying not to put so much pressure on them so they have to save games for us,” he said Friday.

Stuart Skinner, right, backstopped the Connor McDavid and the Oilers pretty far last postseason. Codie McLachlan/Getty Images

Conservative bubble teams deserve our respect

There are no less than eight teams vying for the two wild-card spots in the Eastern Conference. Four more teams are battling for the last wild-card spot in the Western Conference. Yet one glance at the most significant trades of the deadline found only one team at the bubble mentioned: Ottawa, which swapped center Josh Norris for Buffalo’s Dylan Cozens.

But that’s OK. The bubble is so crowded, and the teams around it are so flawed, that anyone can make the cut without taking a big deadline swing.

The verdict: NOT AN OVERREACTION.

I asked an NHL general manager the other day if his peers honestly understood what their teams were at the deadline, or if some would make trades that were more aspirational than realistic. He told me while every GM wants to get into the playoffs — because one never knows what’ll happen and because of that sweet extra ticket revenue — they’re not going to make short-term blockbusters without believing they could win the Cup.

The lack of big swings by the bubble teams underscores that philosophy.

Some teams made moves — the Rangers added Carson Soucy, the Columbus Blue Jackets traded for Luke Kunin — but most did nothing, and a few, like the Bruins, were straight-up sellers. Maybe they make the playoffs, maybe they don’t. But understanding who they are, and not going all-in on a mediocre hand, is laudable.

Mike Grier is low-key the best GM in the NHL

The San Jose Sharks have some significant building blocks for the future in Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith and William Eklund. But in trading no less than seven players this season, GM Mike Grier has continued to amass picks and prospects to surround that core with talent — and schooling the rest of the NHL with his asset management in the process.

The verdict: OVERREACTION.