It Was A Once In A Generation Offseason For The National Hockey League
A couple of summers ago, the hockey world was treated to a day of the likes which we rarely had ever seen before. It was June 29, 2016 and Taylor Hall had just been traded from Edmonton to New Jersey in return for Adam Larsson. The trade was one-for-one. After that, PK Subban had been shipped out of Montreal and was heading for Nashville with Shea Weber coming back the other way. On that same day, it was announced that Steven Stamkos would remain in Tampa Bay. All of this went down over the course of just a couple hours or so and we, as hockey fans, thought we just saw the most amount of action we’ll ever see in a league that seems to relatively stay the course when it comes to making monster trades/signings. But you compare the 2016 offseason to what just went down over the last few months in the NHL and you realize that was nothing besides a couple of imbecile GMs making a couple of mistakes. The 2018 NHL offseason? Well that was The Chosen One.
In early July I wrote a blog about the 5 biggest moves made during the offseason by that point. You can read the whole thing here in case you missed it. But making the cut was Ilya Kovalchuk returning to the NHL and signing with the Kings, Dougie Hamilton being traded to Carolina for Noah Hanifin and Elias Lindholm, Oliver Ekman-Larsson signing long term in Arizona, Ryan O’Reilly getting traded from Buffalo to St. Louis, and then finally John Tavares leaving the island and heading up north to sign with the Toronto Maple Leafs. Already that’s a pretty loaded lineup of moves compared to what we’re used to seeing in the NHL. We always hear rumors about big trades or big signings but typically when the time finally comes for something to happen, we get nothing. Hockey fans have been praying for chaos for a while now. We finally got that chaos this offseason because here are the rest of the moves that have went down this summer.
- Mike Hoffman was traded out of Ottawa to San Jose after after the whole cyber-bullying story broke, and then was subsequently traded from San Jose to Florida just a couple hours later.
- Alex Galchenyuk was traded from Montreal to Arizona for Max Domi
- Drew Doughty was the 2nd player to sign an $11M AAV contract this summer after John Tavares. He’ll be staying long term in LA.
- Jeff Skinner was traded from Carolina to Buffalo in exchange for Cliff Pu and some draft picks.
- Blake Wheeler signed for big money in Winnipeg
- Tyler Seguin signed for big money in Dallas, accompanied by the greatest announcement video ever.
- Steve Yzerman announced he is stepping down as GM in Tampa
- Max Pacioretty was traded out of Montreal to Vegas for Tomas Tatar, Nick Suzuki and a draft pick
- ERIK KARLSSON WAS TRADED FROM OTTAWA TO SAN JOSE IN EXCHANGE FOR 6 ASSETS
Obviously the players re-signing with their teams aren’t exactly “major” moves but there has still been way more money being thrown around this summer than ever before. But holy shit that is a ton of movement around the league. And especially a ton of movement i the Atlantic Division. Pretty sure that division was involved one way or another with at least half of all these days. You lose Karlsson, Pacioretty, Galchenyuk and O’Reilly. You bring in Tavares and Skinner. The gap between the top 3 teams and the bottom 3 teams in that division this year is going to be wild.
So we’ve had 3 captains on the move with Karlsson, JT and Pacioretty. We’ve had a few guys sign for $10+M and a couple more right around that double digit mark. A ridiculous amount of former 1st round picks on the move with a couple of former #1 overall picks in John Tavares and Ilya Kovalchuk. And the best part of all? We’re still not done yet. Because Ottawa is still going to trade Matt Duchene and Mark Stone at some point. I guess technically these trades won’t be included as a part of the 2018 offseason with training camps opening up today. But they’re nuking the shit out of that roster and they’re next in line.
I don’t know what we did to deserve all of these moves but the Puck Gods have been smiling down upon us this summer. Now let’s get back to some actual hockey. I’ve missed you way too much.