Trade Deadline! - April 8, 2018

[Kevin]

The EHE Trade Deadline for the 2017-18 season will be just over one month from now, on Sunday, April 8 at 2pm EDT. This isn't the most ideal timing for me, as I plan to be out of town that weekend, but we'll see how it goes.

Any trades posted after this time will be rejected and any players acquired from waivers after the deadline will NOT be eligible for the playoffs.

In turn, if you think you will need to waive someone in order clear roster space for a player you hope to acquire, that player needs to be placed on waivers before the April 7 simulation or he will not be considered as "on roster" for the April 9 Clear Day, as explained below. Essentially, the last day you can send waiver-eligible players to the minors and have them count for the AHL playoffs is Friday, April 6. For this case, Saturday will be considered as a waiver processing day and could clear on Sunday.

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An important thing to remember about the trade deadline: You will still be able to shuttle players between the NHL and AHL levels for the remainder of the season. However, the AHL roster that you set directly following the trade deadline is your permitted roster for the AHL playoffs.

The only players that will be allowed to be demoted for the AHL playoffs are: those with at least 20 AHL games played before the trade deadline, those who were unable to be sent down at the deadline due to team injury woes, or those who are recalled after the deadline has passed.

Note that if you assign someone to the AHL in order to qualify them, they need to actually play on your farm team. For example, I can't simply send Andrew Copp down on the day after the trade deadline just to qualify him and then call him right back up. He needs to actually play games in the AHL.

These rules are in place to prevent teams from stacking their AHL rosters once they are eliminated from NHL playoff contention.

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This is also the deadline for assigning Franchise Player tags to count for this season.

[Seattle_GM]

Definitely a quiet trade deadline...

[BlackhawksGM]

Either prices are ridiculous or GMs are offering guys that can't help at all.

[Seattle_GM]

Probably a bit of both

[IslesGM]

There's also a handful of GMs who are protecting their low picks instead of going all in.

[OtownSens]

I think the biggest reason it was quiet, at least from my stand point, is that this year will have a TON of UFAs. So for myself, I am in a playoff position, but going forward, I will lose a lot of players during this off-season. Therefore I cannot mortgage my future for more rentals or I will spread myself way too thin and could have a huge rebuild ahead of me. Secondly, I didn't want to sell off my UFAs while in the playoff hunt, especially since my UFAs like Chara, Zetterberg, Frolik, Methot, guys that have value are all invaluable to my team. Thirdly, I had just over $2 mil in cap space, so not a lot of room to work with. Most guys offered were $4 mil plus, so I would have had to trade away a valuable piece on my end just to make a deal work. Put me in this position of not wanting to rock the boat too much and see where my team as is, will take me. I bet there are a few other GMs in this same predicament.

[OtownSens]

Either prices are ridiculous or GMs are offering guys that can't help at all.

I second this sentiment as well. Most guys offered to me either had big price tags (and would have put me way over the cap) or they were guys that would just sit on my bench or maybe 4th line, maybe. No point of trading assets for that.

[Kevin]

I bet there are a few other GMs in this same predicament.

Absolutely. All those free agents made for a ton of sellers. I was told I would need to trade a 5th round pick to get a 7-8 defenseman. Instead, I used the same pick to get Niklas Kronwall. Is Kronwall worth more than a 5th rounder? Hell yeah he is. But Travis understands what supply and demand are and moved him to me to get *something* back. If you aren't going to make the playoffs, you shouldn't sell off the whole team, but sometimes you must accept that market value may be lower than you want it to be in order to get a jump start on the following year.

[Travis]

I bet there are a few other GMs in this same predicament.

Absolutely. All those free agents made for a ton of sellers. I was told I would need to trade a 5th round pick to get a 7-8 defenseman. Instead, I used the same pick to get Niklas Kronwall. Is Kronwall worth more than a 5th rounder? Hell yeah he is. But Travis understands what supply and demand are and moved him to me to get *something* back. If you aren't going to make the playoffs, you shouldn't sell off the whole team, but sometimes you must accept that market value may be lower than you want it to be in order to get a jump start on the following year.

Lol, I didn't have much choice. I only ever got two offers for Kronwall, and the other was rescinded. Sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

This year there were just way more sellers than buyers. I was lucky that I started selling early. If I had waited until the deadline I wouldn't have gotten anything for my players.

[tonychiupsy]

I sold too late, couldn't get anything for Beauchemin, fortunately got something for Cullen ($$$)