Buyer Beware: NHL Trade Deadline Splashes Rarely Deliver Stanley Cups

More often than not, swinging for the fences at the NHL trade deadline doesn't pay off with a Stanley Cup championship. Just ask the Capitals, Bruins, Maple Leafs and Panthers.

The math is simple in the NHL: only one team wins the Stanley Cup each year. 

As a result, most of the contenders who swing for the fences at the NHL trade deadline end up disappointed — and can find their draft capital depleted for years to come.

We tend to remember the deadline deals that hit, like when the Tampa Bay Lightning brought in Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow for two successful Cup runs or even last year’s pickup of Ivan Barbashev by the Vegas Golden Knights. He fit in so well that Vegas opted to keep him over Reilly Smith, an O.G. Golden Misfit, and signed him to a five-year deal.

There have also been plenty of trade-deadline strikeouts. And while George McPhee earned his Stanley Cup ring with Vegas last spring, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that he traded his way out of his GM's job with the Washington Capitals in 2013, when he dealt Grade A prospect Filip Forsberg to the Nashville Predators to bring in Martin Erat.

The Caps also recovered from that misstep and got their Stanley Cup in 2018. But over the years, there have been plenty of examples of teams that have made bold deadline moves and then come up short.

Here are three organizations that have spent big at the deadline over the last few years and don't have a title to show for it — yet.

As they were putting together their record-setting regular season in 2022-23 and knowing they wouldn’t have Patrice Bergeron and David Krejci for much longer, it’s hard to criticize Bruins GM Don Sweeney for going all-in at the 2023 trade deadline. 

But Tyler Bertuzzi, Garnet Hathaway and Dmitry Orlov have all moved on after the Bruins' stunning first-round exit. Now, the club is missing its first- and third-round picks in 2024 and its second and fourth-round picks in 2025 as just part of the packages they gave up in those deals. 

Boston doesn't have its second in 2024 either — that went to Anaheim as part of the Hampus Lindholm package at the 2022 deadline. At least the Bruins have Lindholm locked up long-term, and of course, hindsight is 20/20. 

Now, crunched to the cap ceiling and without many tradeable assets available, Sweeney will need to reach new levels of creativity if he hopes to upgrade this year's Bruins before the clock strikes midnight.

It’s impressive the Maple Leafs have promising prospects like Easton Cowan, Fraser Minten and Dennis Hildeby in their pipeline, and Matthew Knies already in their top six, when they’ve made just 11 draft picks over the last three years.

Yes, they finally won a round last year, and former Leafs GM Kyle Dubas mitigated the deadline carnage a bit last spring by bringing picks back when he shipped out Rasmus Sandin and Pierre Engvall.

But 2023 deadline acquisitions Ryan O’Reilly, Noel Acciari and Luke Schenn are all out the door, along with the Leafs’ own 2023 first-round pick and a pair of thirds. They’re also missing a first and second next year, although at least they still have Jake McCabe. He’s under contract for one more year.

Like Boston, the Leafs have been travelling this road for a while. In 2022, it was Mark Giordano for two seconds and a third, and 2021 was the catastrophic first-round pick dealt away for a total of 11 games from Nick Foligno.

With a new GM now at the wheel, it’ll be fascinating to see how Brad Treliving navigates this year’s deadline. In Calgary, he tended to make his biggest moves in the summer, including the Jonathan Huberdeau acquisition in 2022 and, back in 2018, the deal that brought in Elias Lindholm and Noah Hanifin.

Meanwhile, Panthers GM Bill Zito has been all-in at the NHL trade deadline for his three seasons to date at the helm in Florida — and in the off-season as well, given that he was on the other end of the Huberdeau/Matthew Tkachuk exchange.

There’s no arguing with the way that Zito has vaulted the Panthers from playoff also-rans to Presidents’ Trophy winners in 2022 and Stanley Cup finalists in 2023, but he has spent heavily to get there.

After a terrific first deadline, Zito captured a GM of the year nomination in 2021 for his relatively low-cost acquisitions of Brandon Montour and Sam Bennett, who have both become core players for the Panthers.

In 2022, though, he gave up packages that included first-round picks for Claude Giroux and Ben Chiarot. The Panthers did get their first playoff series win since 1996 but were knocked out a week later when the Lightning swept them. Then, Giroux and Chiarot signed elsewhere.

Last year, with the Panthers still four points out of a playoff spot at the deadline, Zito stood pat — already missing his first- and third-round picks in 2023 as well as his first and second in 2024 and his first-rounder in 2025. 

In that situation, no move turned out to be a great move: Florida already had enough talent on board to push into that final wild-card spot and then stun the hockey world with a playoff run that lasted four rounds and 21 games.

As the 2024 deadline approaches, the Panthers are back among the Eastern Conference leaders and are now armed with the playoff experience that could set them up for another deep run. 

But because he’s still paying for Giroux, Matthew Tkachuk and getting Anton Stralman off his cap budget in the summer of 2021, Zito once again has limited assets to play with. Like Sweeney, he'll need to get creative if he wants to make a deal that he thinks could deliver the last piece of the puzzle to a team that's a legitimate playoff contender — even after some past deadline deals that didn't pan out.