Could any big-name players be dealt at the NHL Trade Deadline?

Daily Faceoff managing editor Matt Larkin shared his updated NHL Trade Board earlier this week. Players like Detroit Red Wings forward Dylan Larkin and Tampa Bay Lightning forward Nikita Kucherov sit at the top of the list, but is you scroll further down, there’s a list of big-name options who teams could be primed to make a blockbuster trade for.

On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton are joined by Matt Larkin to discuss which high-quality players from around the league may be available ahead of the March 1 Trade Deadline.

Matt Larkin: I think Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Erik Karlsson, to me, is someone who would be amenable to a move because he wants to chase that Stanley Cup, and I have the Ottawa Senators circled as a homecoming. His wife is from Ottawa, that’s where they met, and I just think it would make sense for him to come back to where it all began.

Carter Hutton: That would be interesting. You never know … these guys want to go somewhere and have a chance to win late in their career.

The one I wanted to touch on on your trade board is Tier 3. Well, it’s really Tier 1, but it’s kind of like the “what if.” There is some big, big names on there, Matt. Is there any possibility we see something going on here? Obviously, Quinn Hughes leads the board on that one.

Matt Larkin: It’s funny because they’re all intriguing for different reasons, and they have verifying degrees of realisticness.

The Minnesota Wild are too all-in and they’re chasing the Stanley Cup. You have to treat Hughes like the Toronto Maple Leafs treated Mitch Marner a few years ago. He’s an own-rental, and if it doesn’t work out, OK fine, you can trade him at the draft and try to get something for his rights. But otherwise, he’s staying in Minnesota.

Elias Pettersson is intriguing, because he’s increased his value with his play lately. We have a story from Scott Maxwell on Daily Faceoff where if you look under the hood, it’s not necessarily sustainable, so maybe this is a brief window where his value has gone back up and maybe you need to shop him. It is a tough contract to move, it’s a chunky cap hit.

But I do think the Chicago Blackhawks would be a very intriguing fit. That’s a desperate team that has so much cap space and they need another center, a veteran player. They need to start trying to win now. They have too many picks and prospects, you can’t get any more of them. So I like Pettersson as someone the Blackhawks could kick the tires on.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…