Gear, group chats and goodbyes: What happens to a player when he’s dealt at the NHL Trade Deadline
Just days before March 7 at 3:00 p.m. ET, we continue to deliver at least one Trade Deadline focused feature every day at Daily Faceoff. Today, we explore what happens to players who find out they’ve been dealt on or around Deadline Day.
2025 NHL Trade Deadline Countdown: 3 days
Lars Eller didn’t want to disappoint his new team. Even if it meant playing an NHL hockey game with strangers for teammates on a few hours’ notice.
It was Trade Deadline week 2023. Eller was a pending UFA center on the Washington Capitals, wrapping up a rewarding five-year run that included a Stanley Cup win. The Caps were selling off parts, not contending for the playoffs, so he knew he was a probable casualty. But nothing fully prepared him for what happened immediately after the Colorado Avalanche acquired him March 1, 2023.
The Capitals were in Anaheim preparing to play the Ducks. Eller was standing outside his hotel, about to board the team bus for the morning skate at the Honda Center, when he got a one-minute phone call from then-Caps GM Brian MacLellan informing him he’d been traded. Eller backed away from the bus and returned to his hotel room, where he received a call from Avs president of hockey operations Joe Sakic and GM Chris MacFarland. They expressed their excitement and told Eller they really wanted to see him in their lineup that night for a game against the New Jersey Devils.
“You don’t want to disappoint your new team, and you go through phases of emotions when you get traded,” Eller, now back playing with the Capitals, told Daily Faceoff last week. “Initially, you’re saying goodbye to something and you’re leaving something, and it’s just emotional to go through. When that phase passes, in a short amount of time, it turns into excitement about this new and upcoming opportunity that you’re going into.
“So obviously I tell Joe Sakic, ‘Yeah, if you can get in there in time, I’m in.’ ”
Easier said than done for a 7:00 p.m. mountain time start. The Avs found a commercial flight that landed Eller in Denver for about 5:15 p.m. He waited for his gear, then got picked up by an Avalanche Team Services rep, who chauffered him to Ball Arena by about 6:30. Eller rushed into the dressing room, full of new teammates he’d never met, and started gearing up without even taking time to warm his body up. Next: a lightning-quick chat with coach Jared Bednar to go over a few X’s and O’s, whatever basics Eller could download to his brain before puck drop.
“And then it was game on, like 10 minutes later,” Eller said. “With little to no preparation. Some guys, I barely even knew their first names. That was a pretty wild experience. Things change quickly in the NHL, and you have to be able to adapt.”
It’s one thing to be traded in the summer and have time to process every element of the change, from the transition to a new system to uprooting your life and family. It’s another to get yanked out of one city and dropped into another in the middle of a season.
What’s it like to be dealt at the NHL Trade Deadline? What happens in the minutes, hours, days and weeks afterward? With help from Eller and a few other active players traded at recent deadlines, here’s a step-by-step breakdown of the rollercoaster process.
Step 1: Finding out you’re traded
Sometimes, players find out the clean way, like Eller did in 2023, with a simple phone call from their now-former GM. If everything plays out perfectly, a player will get a call from his outgoing GM first, followed by a call from his new GM. That’s the typical etiquette. But the process isn’t always that smooth.
In 2022, Nick Paul tells Daily Faceoff, he did get the call from then-Ottawa Senators GM Pierre Dorion informing him he’d been traded to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but not until a few minutes after Paul’s wife read a rumor about him being traded there. And the call from Dorion came in the evening…while Paul was out to dinner with his family…celebrating his birthday.
Sometimes, a player can think he’s safe only to find out he’s not. Don’t forget, there’s always a backlog of trades filed to the NHL Central Registry by 2:59 p.m. ET, and the last ones take an hour or so to process. In 2020, Nashville Predators defenseman Brady Skjei tells Daily Faceoff, he believed he was still a New York Ranger and was sitting in a coffee shop his wife at 3:15 p.m. On a whim, he refreshed Twitter and, poof, there was the news he’d been traded to the Carolina Hurricanes.
Step 2: Telling people you’re traded
When a player learns he’s been dealt, the natural inclination is to tell loved ones first – assuming you aren’t with them already when you find out, like Paul and Skjei were.
“First I texted and then I spoke to my wife because I had my wife and two kids back in Washington, and your life changes immediately with a phone call, not just for you but for your entire family,” Eller said. “So that’s the first person you talk to, and then you talk to your other team, GM, and I texted my mom and dad or some close friends, family.”
So you might get a quick call or text out in time to break the news to one or two of your closest people, but that may be it; when a trade leaks as breaking news and the player isn’t always the first one to find out, the information travels quickly.
“I had to call my parents, but it seemed like everyone already…I feel like with social media, even back then, I feel like I got a lot of texts,” Skjei said. “I didn’t get to reach out to many people. A lot of people found out over social media.”
Step 3: Goodbye old group chat, hello new group chat
The next move after being traded is to sort through the wreckage on your phone, as Skjei remembers doing on the plane that day. In addition to answering any personal messages, a traded player typically has to depart his old team’s group chat and say a few goodbyes. He’ll start receiving messages from his new teammates, most commonly from the captain and various other leaders on the club, and will be integrated into the new group chat quickly.
“Yeah, there’s a group chat, so it just basically tells us any team functions, if we’re doing a team dinner, someone’s doing a get together at the house, a barbecue, anything like that,” Paul said. “Anything team related goes through there. So I got added to that [chat], and I think we had a team barbecue at Victor Hedman’s house the first two weeks of being there, so that was cool.”
“The [trend] now more and more is you text your old group chat, and then you say ‘Thank you’ and just, ‘Going to miss you guys,’ and ‘Good luck,’ ” Skjei said. “And then you leave that group chat and you’re thrown into a new one. That definitely happened with me for sure.”
Step 4: Team Services sets up your new life
The Team Services department is probably the Hart Trophy winner of any Trade Deadline day. They make all the arrangements to help a player transition to his new team as quickly and seamlessly as possible. On one hand, it can be less complicated to do it all late in a season, because there’s less to uproot if a player is being acquired as a rental. As Eller explains, he didn’t pull his kids out of school when he was headed to Colorado, not knowing whether he’d sign there for the next season. On the other hand, whereas there may be more to do for a player signing a long-term contract in a new market, the challenge of a mid-season trade is that everything has to come together much faster.
There are so many little things to remember. A few that Paul points out: some players need help getting their Green Card situations figured out if they’re part of a border-crossing trade. Others need to figure out where the practice rink is and how to get there. Team Services’ assistance covers everything else from transportation to setting up a practical, if temporary, living arrangement.
“It was all taken care of,” said Skjei, whose pal Vincent Trocheck was traded with him to Carolina on Deadline Day 2020. “We got picked up at the airport by the team services guy, which was kind of nice just to get to know them. And they had an ‘extended stay’ hotel that we stayed at, a hotel that had a kitchen and all that stuff. Me and ‘Troch’ were there and they had a car for each of us, which was nice.”
Step 5: Trying on new gear… and a new coach
If you’re even one tick above casual in your hockey fandom, you know NHL players are often freakishly particular about their equipment. Look at Sidney Crosby and his fossilized shoulder pads. The good news if you’re traded: anything that goes under your uniform can stay the same. The bad news is that the visible, exterior gear that showcases team colors must change.
The helmet is typically the least of a tradee’s worries, as most teams can stock what the player wears or already have it on hand, though Paul says custom helmets are more common than they used to be and may take a couple weeks to arrive. The gloves can be a pain for anyone wanting them to feel broken in, but more so if you’re a high-end skill player relying on delicate touch plays. The pants transition can also be low-key difficult.
“I have no problem with the new gloves, I enjoy new gloves, but the pants the first few times are a little stiff when you get out there,” Skjei said. “I do remember that first game being like, ‘Wow, these things are a little tight.’ It’s already weird, you’re on a new team, new system, new everything and just a lot going on in your head. And the pants being tight and not being able to skate as well as usual, I remember it throwing me for a loop.”
As for learning that new system: it’s challenging for a new addition because he’s not on equal footing with his teammates in doing so. They get accustomed to their coach along with a slew of new additions and/or rookies in training camp or years earlier if they’re mainstay veterans. But a mid-season addition, particularly a late-season one at the Trade Deadline, must catch up fast – and simplify. That means not being too vocal with the new coaching staff about what line or what defense pairing they want; they’re likely to just march in whatever direction the coach points them.
Unless, of course, the coach prefers a more collaborative approach. That was Lightning bench boss Jon Cooper after Paul arrived in 2022.
“Coop was great,” Paul said. “He’s like, ‘Obviously, I’ve seen you play. You’re going to be in the same type of role, but – not a tryout, but he’s like, ‘The better you play, the more opportunities you get. Show me what you got.’ Which was huge for me. A clean slate.
“From there he gave me my leash, ‘Show me what kind of player you want to be,’ and It was nice because before, I wouldn’t try to make plays, but here I’m like, ‘Okay, I want to show them what kind of skill I have and what kind of player I can be.’ ”
Step 6: Conquering the awkwardness with your new team – or your old one
The strangest thing about being dealt midseason: you could end up playing alongside guys you were going to war with just days earlier. Skjei remembers having scrummed it up with Canes power forward Andrei Svechnikov and traded heated blows in a game, then laughing it off once they realized they were teammates. It can feel strange, but players typically have a switch they can flip when enemies become allies.
“Hockey is a good sport where guys have roles on the ice and you’re going to battle, but after the game – you can fight someone, and you can see them at dinner, whatever, and have a drink with them,” Paul said. “We pretty much understand what it is.”
If anything, it’s more awkward to face your former team and battle them shortly after being traded from them. As Skjei recalls, he had to play a playoff series against the Rangers in 2020 because of the bubble playoff tournament setup. Facing a team on which he played for five seasons was far more uncomfortable than adjusting to new teammates.
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The changes in friendships. The unfamiliar instructions from a new coach. Saying long-term goodbyes to teammates and temporary goodbyes to family. All while trying to impress a new team that paid a lot to get you. Being moved at the Trade Deadline is a complicated experience, but it’s a necessarily element of pro hockey. Players understand it, but that doesn’t mean they’re ever fully prepared for it.
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