Transaction

In professional sports within the United States and Canada, a trade is a sports league transaction between sports clubs involving the exchange of player rights from one club/team to another. Though player rights are the primary trading assets, draft picks and/or cash are other assets that may be supplemented to consummate a trade, either packaged alongside player rights to be transferred to another team, or as standalone assets in exchange for player rights and/or draft picks in return. Typically, trades are completed between two clubs, but there are instances where trades are consummated between three or more clubs (e.g., a “three-way trade”).

Conversely, a sports transaction involving a player who becomes a free agent and joins another club/team does not qualify as a trade as the player was not contractually bound to the previous team at the time of acquisition.

The National Hockey League’s trade deadline is calculated as the 40th day before the final day of the regular season, ensuring that it typically falls during the last week of February or the first week of March. Much like Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, the NHL’s trade deadline is often a period of increased player movement; teams that are either making a final push to secure a playoff spot or hoping to go deep into the playoffs attempt to trade to acquire key veterans or proven scorers in order to solidify their rosters. Conversely, teams that are rebuilding with younger players may be willing to trade away their more expensive players in order to “dump” (reduce) salary and get draft picks/prospects in return.

Players on playoff-contending teams who are injured and not expected to return for the current season may be offered to teams that are rebuilding, since they will be of no value to a team’s playoff prospects in the current season but may be of value to another team for (a) future season(s). Also, players who are about to become unrestricted free agents and have indicated that they do not intend to return to their current teams may be traded away so that those teams will get something in return, instead of seeing such players sign with another team while their former teams receive nothing.

The NHL trade deadline also generates a great deal of talk among hockey fans and analysts, with much speculation and discussion about which players will get traded and where they will go. In Canada, the NHL trade deadline is treated with such significance that the two major sports networks TSN and Sportsnet devote much of the day to speculation and coverage of trades.