Trade Chatter To Pick Up Soon As Teams Have Holes

Training camp in the NHL is coming to a close soon enough as there is a week until the season starts, and with that, teams about know what they have, who is at risk if they send them through waivers, or where they are lacking and need to upgrade.

David Pagnotta said that, "We're getting into that period of training camp where teams start to realize they've got holes. I would expect some type of chatter to pick up a little bit in the next week to 10 days."

The Toronto Maple Leafs in particular are a team that is shopping some bottom-6 forwards like Calle Jarnkrok, David Kampf, and even possibly Nick Robertson. The Florida Panthers just lost their best player in Aleksander Barkov for likely most, if not all of the season and need a replacement. Whereas the Vancouver Canucks are seeing holes and want to upgrade their forward group to have a chance.

The expectation is that there will be more injuries over the course of the next week; maybe not serious like Barkov's, but injuries that'll make teams consider moves. While some teams have lots of room to upgrade, others are at the salary cap.

Some upgrades may not come through trades either. There are going to be some more interesting names to hit waivers and we've already seen an early bigger name in Connor Ingram be sent to the AHL by the Utah Mammoth. That wasn't a surprise as the team signed Vitek Vanecek, but the surprise is nobody picked him up with a cap hit of under $2 million AAV. If there is a goalie that'll be on the move, I would put Ingram's name at the top. The team has Jaxson Stauber as the third string, Ingram can play in the NHL, and there will be at least one team looking for the services of a goalie like him soon enough.

While trades are less common near the start of the season, the NHL is a changing environment and teams that have a chance don't want to wait around. Trades are exciting for the most part unless the team you cheer for gets the worst of a deal. I don't think any major moves are going to kick off the season or days leading up to it, but there likely will be a couple of depth players moved around.