Mind Games: What NHL general managers experience on Trade Deadline Day

Think you know sports? PointsBet Canada is live in Ontario!

_____

Wake up. Today’s the day. No need to check messages. That’s why you wore your Apple Watch to bed. If another GM needed to chat you up in the middle of the night for negotiations, buzz buzz, you were reachable.

Now what? Follow up on your latest offer? Hmm. Too early. Don’t want to irritate any of the West Coast GMs. It’s only 3:00 a.m. out there. Shouldn’t seem too desperate, either. Hold off on sending that text. Be patient. Don’t get caught up in the adrenaline surge just because your division rival made a big move last night.

These are the real thoughts of an NHL GM on a typical Trade Deadline Day. It’s a marathon of mind games, trying to balance between blocking the outside noise and using it as leverage and alternating between proactive and reactive depending every season on whether you’re a buyer or seller team.

As this season perhaps more than any other has taught us, everything doesn’t necessarily come down to what happens on Deadline Day. Plenty of teams make moves leading up to it. But everything is ramped up on that final day. That’s when each GM must finally decide on every remaining asset in question, when GMs kick into warp speed talking to all their target teams throughout the day, and when teams line up their trade calls to the NHL’s Central registry.

So what is it like to have a franchise’s fate resting on your shoulders? I spoke to a handful of active GMs to learn more about how a typical deadline day works.

First off: any GM treating Deadline Day as their one and only shot to beef up or sell off expiring assets would, of course, be doing it wrong. For all intents and purposes, the ‘Trade Deadline’ home stretch begins a couple weeks beforehand. Many GMs feel more comfortable having their deals wrapped up well before the actual deadline. It’s not always that easy, of course.

“I’d rather not go to the last day to be honest, so that you aren’t scrambling,” said one GM. “It just happens that you sometimes don’t have opportunities until the last minute. One year I made a deal probably 30 seconds before the deadline and we were really scrambling to get it done with the cap gymnastics.”

By the night before the deadline, talks have typically intensified, leaving teams able to put soft game plans in place for the final day. With emphasis on the word soft.

“Two weeks leading up to the deadline you should have a pretty good understanding of what the market is, what you’re trying to do with your own team, whether it’s to move guys out or move guys in or both,” said one GM. “But you have to be flexible as deadline day goes along, really the 48 hours leading up to the deadline. Because things move very quickly and things change. Surprises happen with certain players who may go that you weren’t expecting to go – or the player goes to (a team) you weren’t expecting, and you’re kind of changing who you’re talking to at that point.”

With some elastic version of a plan in place, it’s time to get some sleep if possible. Some GMs tell Daily Faceoff that sleep isn’t a problem that night. The phone alerts are loud enough that they can hear them if necessary, but they don’t feel a need to hammer out a 2:00 a.m. trade. They rest with relative ease. Well, most do. For one GM, the swirling thoughts lying in bed can make it tough to get some shuteye.

“You may have a discussion going on but you don’t know if that’s enough: ‘Do I have to put more in?’ ” the GM said. “I’d say there’s a degree of nervous apprehension that goes along with the day.”

Even the sound sleepers likely don’t get a normal night’s worth, however. The day – and the negotiations – resume early the next morning. As one Western Conference GM points out, you’re at a disadvantage if your home base is in the Pacific Time Zone. It means waking up well before dawn to keep up with the competition – and arriving in the office by 5:00 a.m., he explains.

Once all the necessary hands are on deck, a GM can set up a War Room. What does that look like? It varies from team to team. Some like to sit elbow to elbow with their assistant GM and pro scouts. Others set up a separate breakout room where they can slip away to talk quietly if they’re getting close on a deal. As one GM points out, the COVID-19 pandemic and use of Zoom has changed the landscape a lot, too. Not only do teams not necessarily have to put all decision making personnel in the same physical space, but they can have more cooks in the kitchen – as in, more staff present on one giant video call.

Everyone plays a different role on a team’s War Room squad. The GM does most of the negotiating but may need the assistant GM to step in if multiple trades are being consummated simultaneously. The majority of GMs rely on their AGMs to make the actual trade calls to Central Registry, though the GM might listen in if there’s time. The pro scouts are particularly valuable to the buyer teams looking to acquire the right veteran pieces. One of the most interesting staff wrinkles on Deadline Day: one GM says he likes to have key members of the player development team close by to let him know “if it’s time to give up on a prospect.”

Once the front office crews are settled in, its time for the GM to get workin’ that phone. Well, maybe. It depends a lot on what position your team is in. While one GM tells Daily Faceoff he’s active every year, whether he’s in a buyer or seller position, another suggests the seller role is much more passive – and powerful.

“If you’re the seller, then you control it, right?” the GM said. “Because at any point in time you can say, ‘OK it’s over. I’ll do this,’ if you’ve got a player and you have a minimum moderate amount of interest. Whereas if you’re the buyer you don’t necessarily control it. You can say, ‘OK I’ll do it,’ and you get, ‘Well I got three other teams I’m dealing with. I’ll let you know. Maybe.’ ”

A big part of that process is understanding whom you’re dealing with. As outsiders, we may think every GM has the icy resolve to put aside any personal feelings or biases in the name of getting a trade done, but think about the way you make moves in fantasy hockey. Do you deal with everyone exactly the same way? Or do you understand that one person prefers a text, the other a call and so on? It’s the same thing in real life, with NHL GMs.

“I like to know who responds and when, who likes a text and who likes to call, and who doesn’t answer the phone and who doesn’t return the messages,” said one GM. “That’s one thing I try to always be aware of with the GMs I deal with – who deals in what fashion and at what pace.”

On the flip side: knowing how to deal with opponents is only half the game. The other half is cultivating a good reputation for yourself as being reachable. As one GM puts it proudly, you can ask any other GM and he’s known to always answer the phone, and in the rare moment he doesn’t, “I’ll usually say that I’m in the shower or having sex or something.” He’s got an image to maintain, after all.

All the little social dynamics can actually matter and affect your ability to deal with other teams. One GM, for instance, follows a few personal rules. If he’s in a seller year, he won’t try to sell to every team in league. He’ll pick a few he believes are fits and focus on having talks with them rather than stringing along every playoff contender. He also makes a point of not wanting to waffle too many times on a given offer.

“I don’t want to be a guy that goes back and forth, back and forth 10 times,” he said. “It’s not a fair way of doing business. I try to always get to the bottom of what is the best offer that we would pay for (as a buyer) or what’s the best offer of someone that would be willing to buy something that we would have to offer. Try to keep it honest and look at the best possible return if we’re selling and best possible price if we’re buying.”

Between all the back and forth: there’s plenty of hurry up and wait on Deadline Day. Some GMs try to keep a normal schedule and get all their meals in. Others might be too nerved up to eat normally and prefer keep snacks handy at all times. One thing every GM seems to do on Deadline Day: keep that TV coverage running. Whether it’s TSN Tradecentre or Sportsnet or – free plug – Daily Faceoff Live, the general consensus seems to be that it’s more of a useful resource than a distraction.

“We have it on,” said a GM. “It’s really just as an information source. I can tell you that you absolutely get information. You learn things. ‘Oh, that happened? Oh, interesting.’ Because Central Registry gets backed up so much.”

“We have it on, because we like to stay up to date,” said another GM. “It’s not necessarily the commentary or the analysis of what just took place with the trade, it’s more about being on top of the trades. Because they get their announcement out quicker.”

“Any info is good info,” said another GM. “And people that work in the media, whether it’s TSN, Sportsnet, NHL Network or whatever, the professionals take themselves seriously. I know in the Twitter world, there’s a lot of BS going around about all kinds of different things. Some people seem to even make shit up, and that’s unfortunate, because it just stirs things up and makes players anxious and makes coaches and managers anxious too sometimes. But from people who take their jobs seriously and have that professional pride, any information is good information.”

But can that trade coverage ever create a ‘Trade Fever,’ in which a bunch of deals are being announced on TV and that motivates other GMs to match? Either the answer is a resounding “No,” or no GM admits to being influenced by what other teams do. They stick to their game plans.

“I’ve never been a person to get involved or advocate that our organization get involved just for the sake of getting involved,” said a GM. “I remember a couple of instances where a GM had a press conference and said, ‘Could’ve made my team better, could have made my team a lot worse, so I didn’t.’ ”

You make your final decisions, pivoting to your plan B or C as the 3:00 p.m. ET deadline approaches, and then it’s time to meet the media. Whether that’s a fun task or pulling teeth can depend on whether you’re all in, and in one GM’s mind it’s also heavily influenced by the media market you work in.

“You just tell them how you feel, how you did: ‘We would’ve liked to have done a little more, ‘or, ‘We accomplished what we wanted to.’ ” the GM said. “But of course in certain markets there’s expectations of what’s going to happen and sometimes they’re not realistic, and you’re going to get that type of question from the media that you have to handle that is really not how your hockey operations people view things. It’s more what that expectation is in the market.”

And after one of the longest, toughest days of the hockey calendar, it’s time to crash. Right? Not necessarily. Back to the matter of sleep. For one GM, it’s the night after the deadline that brings the insomnia. Did he get the pieces he needed? Did he overpay? Is it time to start preparing for the draft?

That’s life as an NHL general manager. The work never stops.

_____

Mind Games: What NHL general managers experience on Trade Deadline Day

Recently by Matt Larkin