Daily Faceoff Live: Which teams should make a hockey trade before deadline?

Daily Faceoff hockey analysts Frank Seravalli and Mike McKenna discussed a few of the teams to watch at the NHL trade deadline on Daily Faceoff Live on Tuesday:

Frank Seravalli: The social media sphere was bubbling on Monday night. They took a look at the pressbox seating chart and they noticed that a couple of NHL general managers were in Calgary at the Saddledome for that Flames and Blue Jackets game with Johnny Gaudreau making his homecoming.

Kelly McCrimmon of the Vegas Golden Knights was there. Doug Armstrong, the GM of the St. Louis Blues was there, along with Scott Mellanby, their senior adviser to the GM. And so a lot of people instantly wondered: what does this mean? I can tell you that for the most part, it just means that there’s a top prospects game in Vancouver and this was an easy stop along the way.

But more to the point, there will be traction and things heating up. We’re always so focused on the rental market and some pieces that could be moving in that direction. But I’m going to throw a couple of teams at you in terms of teams that could be making hockey trades, meaning a straight-up classic “guys that have term on their contract for another guy that has term on his contract”.

Which one stands out to you as one in most in need of one to shake things up? I’m gonna go Ottawa Senators, New York Islanders, the Florida Panthers for reasons that we just talked about, what about the Calgary Flames or the Pittsburgh Penguins – teams that are potentially tapped out and don’t have a ton of wiggle room and or assets to make something happen, but would like to do something which one is in need?

Mike McKenna: Out of those clubs, I think probably Calgary is the one that could use a little bit of help across the board. Missing (Oliver) Kylington all year hurts that club. You look at somebody like Andrew Mangiapane, who’s not performing up to his expectation at the cap, and you probably can’t move that contract. If you’re going to shake something up to try to get it going in Calgary, I think there are contracts that could move. Even Backlund or Dube, do you do something a little bit drastic and move someone?

Pittsburgh, I think it’s more or less just based on being Burke and Hextall’s M.O. is that they’re willing to make those trades that are hotkey trades. You look at Matheson for Petry or Marino for Ty Smith. I think they’d like to move on from Pettersson and his $4 million deal. So I think that those are the two clubs to watch, for me.

You can watch the full episode here: