NHL Trade Deadline

NHL Trade Deadline

The National Hockey League (NHL) trade deadline is a date and time set by the NHL league office after which any player acquired by a team is ineligible to participate in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The deadline for the 2012–13 NHL season is set for April 3, 2013, at 3 pm EST.

The NHL trade deadline, and the weeks prior to it, usually brings a flurry of activity for many teams. 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 will want to trade away their more expensive players in order to "dump" (reduce) salary and get draft picks in return. 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 most major sports networks (including TSN and Sportsnet) devote much of the day to analysis of trades.

Though popular focus is on general managers and the deals they do and do not make, it is business as usual for the rest of the team, with regularly scheduled games and practices taking place.