NHL GMs often give players no-trade and no-move protection to keep costs down and hold together competitive cores. But often, it doesn't work out as they might have planned.
It's not inherently a bad thing for an NHL team to give its players movement protection. Whether it's a partial no-trade or full no-movement clause, the reason is simple: Players are willing to trade actual dollars — sometimes hundreds of thousands or more — in exchange for security that they won't be forced to move somewhere they don't want to go.
As such, having a lot of players with NTCs or NMCs is not inherently a bad thing, as long as the team is competitive and expects to remain so for the foreseeable future. The Florida Panthers aren't begrudged for the 12 players on their roster with some sort of movement protection. For a core with two Stanley Cups in its back pocket, that's just how it has to be.
But plenty of other teams around the league gave out that kind of protection for no particularly good reason. Those clubs are now looking at a future where doing the right thing, trading useful veterans for future help, is made significantly more difficult because they were a little too eager to save a couple of bucks with movement protection.
Here are some of the most egregious situations currently in the NHL.
1. Los Angeles Kings (Two NMCs, Four Full NTCs, Seven Partial NTCs)
The Los Angeles Kings have 13 players with some sort of say over where they get traded. The same Kings who have been a pushover in the post-season and even the regular season for the past decade or so.
This is what happens when you have a lot of veterans — also the oldest team in the league by average age — and spend the last few seasons convincing yourself that you are just a first-round playoff victory against the Edmonton Oilers away from being competitive. That didn't pan out.
While only two players have full no-moves - Artemi Panarin and Adrian Kempe - the real problem is with the full and partial no-trades. Oddly, Cody Ceci, Joel Edmundson, and Brian Dumoulin say no to 10 teams. GM Ken Holland and former GM Rob Blake must've lost the plot with those decisions.
Now, to be fair, this was the work of multiple GMs who clearly had the same goal: Get into the playoffs and maybe it works out. But the days of these Kings being a legit playoff contender already seem numbered.
2. Toronto Maple Leafs (Seven NMCs, Two Full NTCs, Six Partial NTCs)
Not hard to understand how the Toronto Maple Leafs got themselves into this situation.
A lot of these are holdovers from the Kyle Dubas era, when the team felt like it had a bright future. But then Brad Treliving came in and messed all that up by targeting guys like Jake McCabe and Oliver Ekman-Larsson for long-term deals that don't feel like they're going to age well.
The extant deals, plus the pressure of trying to convince Auston Matthews not to hit free agency in 2028, led new GM John Chayka to give out or trade for another five protection clauses this summer alone.
It's a bad situation, because while the Leafs definitely improved this summer, it doesn't feel like that really matters very much in the grand scheme of things at the top of the league.
Toronto does not appear to be in that group at all, and all this trade and movement protection is a big reason why.
3. Boston Bruins (Five NMCs, Two Full NTCs, Four Partial NTCs)
On some level, this situation is defensible. It's hard to find top players at any given position who don't have total say over where they are traded, whether it's an NMC or full NTC. And for the most part, the Boston Bruins who have those clauses (David Pastrnak, Charlie McAvoy, Hampus Lindholm, and Jeremy Swayman) are or were in that class.
Less so for Elias Lindholm (NMC) or Morgan Geekie and Tanner Jeannot (full NTC), who the latter two got that kind of protection in summer 2025 when Don Sweeney was desperate to stay relevant and keep his job after firing coach Jim Montgomery early in the 2024-25 season.
The problem for the Bruins is that spate of partial NTCs for guys who just don't really deserve them. That includes Casey Mittelstadt and Pavel Zacha, Nikita Zadorov and recently acquired Will Borgen.
None of these players are bad per se, but the Bruins don't have the brightest of futures, and the lack of flexibility they have as a result of all this work from Sweeney is hard to defend.
4. New Jersey Devils (Four NMCs, Four Full NTCs, Five Partial NTCs)
The New Jersey Devils' situation is precarious to say the least. They, too, were once viewed as a team of the future, but have just one playoff appearance in the last three seasons, and they won just one game in that 2025 first round.
Much like the Leafs, it was easy to justify why you'd give guys like Timo Meier and Jesper Bratt total movement protection. And it's easy to see why Jack Hughes gets a 10-team no-trade list, or why Nico Hischier's latest contract extension includes an NMC for the next five years after this coming season.
But it's deeper down the roster where things start getting dicey. Why can Johnathan Kovacevic, Connor Brown, and Brett Pesce veto any trade and Stefan Noesen can say no to seven?
It's easy to see how Tom Fitzgerald painted himself into a corner here, and it's easy to see why now it's up to Sunny Mehta to paint the Devils back out.
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