No-Trade Clauses Under Fire After Difficult NHL Trade Deadline

St. Louis Blues defenseman Colton Parayko

There was disappointment around the league at the lack of a big number of notable trades at this year's deadline, and much of the blame is being placed on the proliferation of no-trade clauses that so many players seem to hold these days.

And a lot of them played out on the public stage, which made matters even worse, for all involved—players, teams, GMs, and even fans.

Colton Parayko, for instance, very publicly put the kibosh on a trade to the Buffalo Sabres, and Tyler Myers did the same on a pending trade that the Vancouver Canucks had in place with the Detroit Red Wings. We also learned (though after the fact) that Vincent Trocheck turned aside a couple teams on the West Coast earlier in the week. MacKenzie Weegar, on the other hand, did agree to waive his NTC to go to the Utah Mammoth. But not before we all heard about the pending trade first.

Elliotte Friedman said on his 32 Thoughts podcast, the fact that players had to make so many of those decisions with the potential trade already 'out there' in the public, was especially troubling.

"I don't know if anything can be done about this, but there were people who were furious that Parayko was put in that position, and Weegar was put in that position. People were angry about this."

'There are teams that want to' limit no-trade clauses

Make no mistake, the NTCs are negotiated in good faith by both sides, and the players have a right to use 'em if they got 'em. But there are so many of them, that it made trades extra difficult this year. We can expect the NHL to do something about it, at some point down the line, said Friedman.

I do think in the next CBA, the league will go after (the no-trade clauses) on some level. One thing I heard on Friday... was that I think there were some teams that said to Bettman as they were preparing to do (the last CBA negotiation), 'Can we do something about the number of no-trade clauses?'... Obviously, it didn't happen this time, but that doesn't mean it won't be something somewhere down the road. I've heard there are teams that wanna go after (the NTCs).

Some of the proposals being floated by insiders include things like limiting the number of no-trades a team can have at any one time, or perhaps limiting how many years a player can have one in their contract, etc.

"I do think it's a thing among the teams. 'Like, can we limit these somehow?'"