Winners and Losers from the 2022 NHL Trade Deadline

The run-up was interminable. 

But once it arrived Monday, the NHL's annual trade deadline veered a bit closer to frantic.

The reigning Vezina Trophy winner was moved for the second time in eight months just ahead of the final bell, but truth told, much of the intrigue was sparked days before when the Florida Panthers loaded up with a pair of high-profile deals and the Boston Bruins plucked a coveted defenseman from the West Coast. 

Monday's top-line buzz came courtesy of Marc-Andre Fleury, who was the league's best goaltender last season with the Vegas Golden Knights before heading to Chicago in a cost-cutting move over the summer.

He moves about 400 miles northwest to the Minnesota Wild this time around in exchange for a conditional draft pick. It's a second-round selection in the 2022 draft as of now but will transition to a first-rounder if the Wild reach the Western Conference Final and Fleury wins at least four games in the first two rounds.

The Blackhawks are retaining half of Fleury's salary in the final season of the three-year, $21 million pact he signed with Vegas in 2018.

"I think just a chance to be in the playoffs, a chance to get there, to battle to get there, to battle to go win," Fleury told TSN (h/t ESPN) "I think that's why we all play in the end. Also, a good fit for me with my family. They're going to stay in Chicago. And it's not too far away. And obviously [the Wild] have a great team. They're great defensively. They have a lot of big guys and they play well."

The Fleury deal highlighted the 30 made Monday before the window closed at 3 p.m. ET, following a stream of 20 other trades that came from March 1-20.

The activity prompted the B/R hockey team to get together for its annual transaction dissection party, which yielded a list of winners and losers from the prolonged deadline frenzy.

Take a moment to peruse our collection, and drop a viewpoint or two of your own in the comments.

So you wanna be a contender in the Eastern Conference?

Get in line. You've got plenty of company.

Nearly all of the major players in the East made at least some sort of bid to improve through Monday afternoon, with the Florida Panthers perhaps taking the biggest leap forward.

The NHL's southernmost residents got on the board early and often, initially pulling the trigger Wednesday on a trade that brought impending free-agent defenseman Ben Chiarot from the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for prospect Ty Smilanic and a pair of draft picks.

They got back to work again Saturday, connecting this time with Philadelphia on a swap that brought longtime Flyers captain Claude Giroux, forwards Connor Bunnaman and German Rubtsov and a pick to metropolitan Miami in exchange for 2017 first-rounder Owen Tippett and two more picks, including a first-rounder in either 2024 or 2025.

Not to be outdone in their own home state, the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning also handled some business, starting Friday with a deal that brought forward Brandon Hagel and two picks from Chicago for two depth forwards and two conditional first-round picks.

They followed up Sunday by getting forward Nick Paul from the Ottawa Senators for forward Mathieu Joseph and a pick and kept it going Monday with a move that brought back forward Riley Nash from Arizona for future considerations.

Elsewhere in the Atlantic Division, the Boston Bruins got themselves a quality blueliner on Saturday when it grabbed Hampus Lindholm from the Anaheim Ducks in exchange for defensemen John Moore and Urho Vaakanainen and three picks. Lindholm was on the verge of free agency, but the Bruins took care of that a day later by signing him to an eight-year deal worth $52 million.

The Toronto Maple Leafs rounded out the Atlantic haul when it got veteran defenseman Mark Giordano on Sunday from the Seattle Kraken, and the New York Rangers made a case for the Metropolitan when they acquired forward Andrew Copp and a pick from the Winnipeg Jets, Tyler Motte from the Vancouver Canucks and defenseman Justin Braun from Philadelphia.

The Pittsburgh Penguins made the final Eastern deal of note, grabbing Ducks forward Richard Rakell in return for a host of assets, including forwards Zach Aston-Reese and Dominik Simon, the rights to goalie Calle Clang and a pick.

So are you sure you want to be a contender in the Eastern Conference?

Like the last slide illustrated, you're not alone.

And with only 10 points separating the best team in the conference (Florida) from the eighth-best team (the Washington Capitals), it's going to be a particularly hectic race to the regular-season wire in both divisions after nearly every team made a noteworthy addition.

The Panthers hold a six-point lead on second-place Tampa Bay and a seven-point edge over third-place Toronto in the Atlantic heading into Monday's games, while the Metropolitan penthouse, occupied by the Carolina Hurricanes, is just three points above the hard-charging Rangers, who are 7-3 in their past 10 games, and the Penguins, who are 7-2-1 in the same span.

Boston and Washington seem comfortable enough in the wild-card positions, boasting double-digit leads on nearest pursuer Columbus. In fact, they are both closer to their respective division leaders—the Bruins are seven points behind Florida, while the Capitals trail Carolina by eight—than they are the Blue Jackets.

The Hurricanes initially seemed to have made nary a peep at the deadline, instead preferring to stand pat with a team that's just 4-4-2 in March while allowing 25 goals and scoring just 21. But then word came down just before 6:30 p.m. ET that they had engineered a three-team deal that yielded them forward Max Domi from Columbus and defenseman Tyler Inamoto from Florida.

The Blue Jackets retained half of what's left on the two-year, $10.6 million deal Domi signed in 2020, and Carolina sent defenseman Aidan Hreschuk to Columbus and forward Egor Korshkov to Florida, which will take on 25 percent of Domi's salary, to complete the three-pronged exchange.

A 27-year-old selected 12th overall in 2013, Domi has scored 17 or more goals in three NHL seasons but had just 18 across 107 games with the Blue Jackets after he was dealt from Montreal for Josh Anderson in 2020.

"We're excited to add Max to our organization," Carolina GM Don Waddell said. "His skillset and competitiveness complement our group, and we think he will be a great fit."

Gentlemen, start your stretch drives.

It's not as if they needed any help.

After all, the Colorado Avalanche have been atop the Western Conference for most of the season, they have topped B/R's NHL Power Rankings for each of the past nine weeks and they have an uber-comfortable 17-point Central Division lead.

But that apparently wasn't good enough for general manager Joe Sakic.

Instead of standing safely pat at the deadline, the player-turned-GM jumped into the trade pool with both feet, swinging three deals that netted both a veteran and a 20-something up front and a hulking defenseman on the verge of unrestricted free agency.

Last things first, the Avalanche turned toward Anaheim a week ago and swapped both prospect Drew Helleson and a second-round pick in 2023 for 6'3", 218-pounder Josh Manson. The 30-year-old had played 653 games across parts of eight seasons with the Ducks and is in the final weeks of the four-year, $16.4 million deal he signed just before the 2017-18 season.

Then, on deadline day itself, Colorado sent defenseman Justin Barron and a second-rounder in 2024 for Finnish forward Artturi Lehkonen, who scored 13 goals in 58 games with Montreal this season and 74 in 396 games since debuting with the Canadiens in 2016-17. And later, the Avalanche picked up the 34-year-old Andrew Cogliano, who was picked in the first round by Edmonton in 2005 and carved out a niche as a spunky, two-way player while running up an ironman streak of 830 games into 2018.

Colorado sent a fifth-round pick to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for Cogliano, who's produced better than 400 points while playing more than 1,100 games with the Oilers, Sharks, Ducks and Dallas Stars.

For Sakic, it's all about building a roster that can parlay perpetual regular-season success—the Avalanche won the Presidents' Trophy in 2020-21 before a second-round playoff exit—into the franchise's first Stanley Cup since 2001.

"The bottom six and our depth is much improved," Sakic said. "To go through a two-month playoff run, you need depth."

Don't be surprised if the headlines turn sour Tuesday.

Particularly in Edmonton and Toronto.

The Oilers and Maple Leafs were the top two playoff seeds from the reconfigured Canada-based North Division after the 2020-21 regular season, but neither made it to the second round following losses that stretched their respective Stanley Cup droughts to 54 and 31 years.

Much of the post-flameout chatter focused on goaltending, particularly after Toronto allowed 10 goals in the final three games of a seven-game loss to the Canadiens after they had allowed just four in the first four games while establishing a 3-1 series lead. Meanwhile, Edmonton gave up 14 goals in a four-game sweep by the Winnipeg Jets after dominating the season series between the teams by a 7-2 margin.

It's continued into 2021-22 as well.

Oft-injured starter Mike Smith (6-8-2, 3.37 goals-against average, .896 save percentage) has been wildly inconsistent for the Oilers, while the Maple Leafs recently lost Jack Campbell to a rib injury. He's not played since March 8 after allowing nine goals on 58 shots in his two most recent appearances. His replacement, Petr Mrazek, gave up eight on 49 shots in his two starts after Campbell's exit.

Their iffy performances prompted Edmonton to rely on journeyman Mikko Koskinen and Toronto to turn to rookie Erik Kallgren, and both fanbases looked toward the trade deadline as an opportunity to bring in more proven commodities who would be more reliable in a drought-ending situation.

Fleury in Chicago. Alexandar Georgiev in New York. John Gibson in Anaheim.

But when Monday evening arrived, none had crossed the border into Alberta or Ontario.

The Minnesota Wild snapped up Fleury and his three-Cup pedigree for a conditional draft pick, leaving Dubas to rationalize his decision to stay the course with his existing assets.

"[Campbell] always finds a way to bounce back," he told reporters. "He's a competitor, and he thrives when there are doubts and when things get rocky. For me, being a goaltender here in Toronto, you have to have that quality. And he has it."

Let's face it, the numbers aren't all that great.

The Arizona Coyotes, Seattle Kraken and Montreal Canadiens entered Monday's games in the 30th, 31st and 32nd positions in the league's overall standings.

So it's clear that there won't be a parade lap in any one of their arenas anytime soon.

But that doesn't mean some work can't be done in the meantime, as evidenced by the 16 deals the three teams swung to kick-start their rebuilding projects between March 1 and deadline day.

The Coyotes picked up forward Bryan Little, the rights to forwards Jack McBain and Nathan Smith, third- and fourth-round picks in the 2023 draft and future considerations across five deals with Tampa Bay, Washington, Winnipeg, Minnesota and Dallas. 

Meanwhile, the Kraken got forwards Victor Rask and Daniel Sprong and a raft of picks—two seconds and a third in 2022, a second, fourth and sixth in 2023 and a third in 2024—while parting with Marcus Johansson, Mason Appleton, Jeremy Lauzon, Mark Giordano, Colin Blackwell and Calle Jarnkrok in trades with Minnesota, Washington, Winnipeg, Nashville, Toronto and Calgary.

And not to be outdone, the Canadiens took defenseman William Lagesson from Edmonton, forward Nate Schnarr from New Jersey, defenseman Justin Barron from Colorado and Ty Smilanic from Florida in addition to a raft of picks, including a conditional second-rounder in 2022, a fourth-rounder in 2022, a first-rounder in 2023, a second-rounder in 2024, a seventh-rounder in 2024 and future considerations.

It was a full-scale immersion for Montreal GM Kent Hughes, who took the job in mid-January after previously working as a player agent.

"There were a lot of jokes about the salary cap and comments from a lot of GMs about how 'for the first time in your life, the cap counts,'" Hughes told Tristan D'Amours of The Canadian Press (h/t Delta Optimist). "... [We have] a substantial number of picks, and we can make determinations at that point in time whether we use them or whether they're part of a trade process in the future. ... We will continue to advance. Anytime we can advance the timeline here to putting a playoff contending team on the ice. We'll do it."

Sometimes plans are just that.

Plans.

Bless their hearts, the Chicago Blackhawks were an optimistic bunch heading toward 2021-22, as evidenced by an offseason in which they acquired high-profile defenseman Seth Jones in a trade with the Columbus Blue Jackets on July 23 and brought in Vezina-winning goalie Fleury from Vegas four days later.

Jones inked an eight-year, $76 million contract on July 28, and Fleury, after initially greeting the trade with reticence and retirement talk, went public on August 1 with his intention to play in Chicago.

So coming off a season in which they went 24-25-7 and missed the playoffs for the third time in four years, there was plenty of reason for optimism that things were about to improve for the Blackhawks.

Until they didn't.

Chicago struggled on the ice early while dealing with the results of an investigation into the organization's handling of sexual assault allegations made against then-video coach Brad Aldrich by former Blackhawks player Kyle Beach in 2010.

The team was fined $2 million and team president Stan Bowman and senior director of hockey administration Al MacIsaac both resigned. Joel Quenneville, the team's head coach in 2010, also resigned from the same position with the Florida Panthers.

Meanwhile, head coach Jeremy Colliton was fired after the team's poor start, and it's not gotten a whole lot better under interim coach Derek King, with the team sitting 22-32-9 and seventh in the Central Division.

The plans officially went by the wayside at deadline time when Fleury was dealt to Minnesota for a conditional draft pick, forward Brandon Hagel went to Tampa Bay for two depth forwards and two conditional first-rounders and center Ryan Carpenter was shipped to Calgary for a fifth-rounder in 2024.

"There are some things that we really need to fix that are going to take time," GM Kyle Davidson said at his introductory press conference at the start of March. "We're not going to put a timeline on it, whether it's three, five [years]. I don't have that answer right now. That will be determined as we proceed.

"But we really need to do this the right way, and we're going to stick to the plan and take our time with it and make sure that when we get to where we want to go. Then it was the result of a plan that was stuck to and not deviated from."

The dominoes were set up last summer.

Minnesota GM Bill Guerin brought players in, shipped players out, got important pieces—winger Kirill Kaprizov and center Joel Eriksson Ek among them—signed to long-term deals and began the process that saw the Wild climb as high as sixth overall by the season's midway point.

They are in second place in the Central Division and are certainly worthy of consideration to reach the postseason's second round for the first time since 2015.

But Monday made it clear that wasn't quite good enough.

Guerin made perhaps the boldest move of the trade deadline period when he brought up the oft-aforementioned and uber-decorated Fleury, at 37 and languishing in Chicago, to Minnesota for a conditional pick.

The three-time Cup champ made 160 starts, won 90 games, posted 16 shutouts and recorded a 2.53 goals-against average and a .912 save percentage across 15 playoff seasons with Pittsburgh and Vegas—including seven separate runs of double-digit games in which his win-loss record was 75-46.

Minnesota's goals-against average of 3.15 in 2021-22 with the tandem of Cam Talbot and Kaapo Kahkonen is 20th in the league, and Guerin made the transition complete by sending Kahkonen and a fifth-round pick to San Jose in exchange for defenseman Jacob Middleton.

And now it's all systems go for crunch time.

"It's no secret I know Flower, I know him very well," said Guerin, a teammate of Fleury's in Pittsburgh. "He's had a lot of playoff success. I think he can help all of us. That experience is key. We just want him to come in here and play, be himself. It's not all on him or all on the new guys. They are part of the team.

"We still have to work together. ... We just want them to come in and have fun and play and help us win games and get into the playoffs."