The NHL Deadline is this week, and the PWHL deadline the week following. Here's a look at what PWHL fans should and shouldn't expect if the NHL's deadline is the model.
The NHL Deadline is this week, and the PWHL deadline the week following. Here's a look at what PWHL fans should and shouldn't expect if the NHL's deadline is the model.
This week the annual NHL fire sale will begin. At the 2023 NHL Trade Deadline, 34 players were moved, along with 14 draft picks. In 2022, that number was 51 players, the second highest total ever (55 players were traded twice), and 26 draft picks, a number tied for the most all-time.
While most of the blockbuster NHL trades seem to now come in the days leading up to the trade deadline, it's still a wildly popular day for NHL fans and media tracking not only how their team will approach the stretch run, but as a potentially franchise defining date for years to come as prospects and picks trade places.
Fans of the PWHL shouldn't expect the same flurry of activity for a number of reasons. Here's a look at many of the factors:
1. "Gold Plan" will minimize sell offs
The PWHL will not be a team that tanks. NHL teams certainly don't "tank" in the form of fielding an intentionally inferior roster, but they will trade off key players who would help their team in the short term in favour of draft picks, prospects, and cap space. The PWHL's newly announced "Gold Plan" where non-playoff teams will compete following their mathematical elimination for the right to choose first overall. With the selection order impacting all rounds, it's not just the first overall pick the team is earning, they're earning an extra draft position in all seven rounds, which in the first four rounds in particular, is significant.
2. No draft picks to be traded this year
This is perhaps the most stifling situation in terms of trades this year. Teams looking to get better typically don't want to give up a roster player, and in the NHL will opt for draft picks or prospects in return. In the PWHL, draft picks can't be traded, and there are no prospects (at least not yet). A roster player for roster player scenario is most likely to occur when it's a positional trade, for example, a team sending a center to a team for a defender to meet needs of both teams.
3. There are no player rights owned by teams
In essence, aside from the 36 players on guaranteed three-year contracts, every single player in the PWHL is a "rental" by NHL standards. Yes, there are some two-year contracts in the league, but none of those are guaranteed, so teams can cut ties with those players if they want. Making a trade deadline deal when a player can walk at the end of the season makes sense when the return can include futures coming back, but in the current state, teams will be trading rental for rental in most circumstances. With no guarantee any player will stay, it makes trades risky if you're looking beyond how that player will help for the final month of the season.
4. Fixed roster size means it's a player out for a player in
In the NHL, when a team wants to make a specific upgrade, if prospects and picks aren't involved, then it usually turns into a two or three player for one deal. In the PWHL, any discrepancy in number of players involved means players must be cut. If you receive an additional player, you immediately need to cut a player from your roster to meet the required 23 player roster specifications. If you give up an extra player, you'll need to add a free agent or sign a reserve to stay roster compliant. It's another hurdle the NHL, who can pull from large player pools, does not have.
5. Salary Cap is Salary Average
The NHL has a salary cap upper limit of $83.5M and a salary cap floor of $61.7M. This means that many teams ship contracts around the league for the sake of making cap space to sign players in the offseason, or to add at the trade deadline. In the PWHL, the salary cap is actually a salary average of $55,000 per player. That equates to $1,265,000 per team. Teams are allowed to exceed that cap in season, or go below it, based on trades, but they need to get back to the cap in the offseason, while also abiding by the league's rules for maximum number of players with a league minimum salary. It's a rule that makes trading the league's highest paid players, who are all on three-year guaranteed contracts, difficult. Boston and Minnesota pulled this off with Sophie Jaques, but it will impact how both teams can approach free agency this summer.
6. Short season a consideration
There are only 20 games, total, across the entire league left after the trade deadline. For Montreal and Minnesota, that equates to only six games left. For the rest of the league it's seven games left. Comparatively it's a quarter of the season, slightly more than in the NHL, but far less games where an injury beyond the long World Championship break could be devastating to a trade result.