Is there any time of the season that’s more bittersweet than the trade deadline?
For some players, it’s a shot at a new beginning. They go to new teams, meet new friends and have experiences that they otherwise would never have gotten. Their new teammates are overjoyed to have another key piece, which could push them over the edge as Stanley Cup contenders.
For others, it’s an admission of defeat — a sign from management that the team didn’t do enough to continue legitimizing their playoff push.
Utah Hockey Club general manager Bill Armstrong told UHC team reporter Craig Morgan that he’s still waiting to make his decision on which direction he’d take his team next month. They have six games remaining before the March 7 deadline.
As dreaded as that day is for players, it’s better than Christmas for fans and media. In anticipation, I went around the Utah HC locker room asking the veterans about their trade deadline experiences.
Here’s what they said.
Utah HC defenseman Ian Cole recalls his feelings of joy when his team last season, the Vancouver Canucks, acquired his former teammate Nikita Zadorov.
“I went from playing with some good, but mostly younger guys with less experience to getting to play with Zadorov, who I’d played with in Colorado,” Cole said. “Any time, as a D-man, you can play with a better partner, a more experienced partner, it’s a good situation.”
Alex Kerfoot and others expressed how much better it is to gain teammates rather than lose them.
“When you’re adding, it means that you’re in the hunt,” he said. “You’ve got a chance. Management’s willing to do whatever it takes to go all-in. You don’t just do that for no reason — you have to earn it. You have to have a really good regular season and put yourself in a position where they think you’re a contender, so adding pieces is always a lot more exciting.”
Cole also pointed out that adding a teammate means someone who has worked hard all year suddenly gets an assigned seat in the press box.
“It’s different for everybody because if you’re in a position in the lineup where they bring somebody in and that may be the reason you’re out of the lineup, obviously you’re not going to be thrilled about it,” he said. “If you’re in the lineup and you have another great player you can play with, you’re probably pretty excited about it.”
More than anything, Kerfoot hates the fact that selling at the deadline is an admission that the team doesn’t have what it takes to win.
“It’s kind of a somber feeling in the room where it’s like, ‘OK, we haven’t done enough, so the team organization has made a decision that they need to recoup some assets at this time of year,’” he said.
The other difficult part is losing a teammate.
“That’s always a tough time because you’ve spent 60-odd games with guys and you’ve been working towards something and to see things go in that way, it’s never a good feeling,” Kerfoot said. “It almost feels like, not that the season’s over, but that, like, they’re signaling that we didn’t do enough.”
Cole, who has been traded leading up to the deadline three times in his career, shared his experience getting moved mid-season.
“It’s obviously not ideal,” he said. “You’re going from 20 or 23 guys that you know and love and care about, and you’re basically being thrown into another room of 20 or 23 guys that maybe you know one or two, or acquaintances or friends of friends, but really, you don’t know them very well.”
That being said, the hockey can suddenly become a lot more meaningful.
“If you go from a team that’s at the bottom of the standings to a Cup favorite, you’re probably pretty excited,” Cole said. “If you’re going from a mid-tier team, from just a playoff team to (another) playoff team, it’s probably fairly demoralizing.”
He talked about former NHL defenseman and current “Spittin’ Chiclets” host Ryan Whitney, who was traded from the Pittsburgh Penguins to the Anaheim Ducks just months before the Penguins won the Stanley Cup.
“It’s one of those things that sometimes it’s great, sometimes it’s not,” Cole said. “It just really depends.”
Cole, personally, has always been the one being shipped out to contending teams. He earned two Stanley Cup rings after being traded to the Penguins and has not missed the playoffs since his first NHL season.
Olli Määttä, who has been traded three times, finds that the best way to get to know his new team is to be thrown into the fire immediately.
“It’s kind of a blur, to be honest. It just happens quick. There’s so many games that you don’t really get to think about it, which is probably a good thing,” he said. “That’s probably the easiest way to get to know the guys and get acclimated.”
Kerfoot appreciates the team staff’s role in helping players get settled in their new cities.
“I think that teams these days do a really good job of getting guys acclimated pretty quickly,” he said.
The only way to be sure you won’t be traded is to negotiate trade protection into your contract, but that’s typically reserved for the star players — and even then, teams still find ways to get around them if they really want to make the trade happen.
Mikhail Sergachev, for example, got traded to Utah the day before his no-trade clause kicked in; the Tampa Bay Lightning infamously convinced Ryan McDonagh to waive his trade protection with the threat of putting him on waivers; and hockey fans got to witness a full drama series with the Jacob Trouba trade situation earlier this season.
“Mikko Rantanen just got traded, so you’re never fully comfortable. It’s part of the business: Anyone can get traded at any point,” Kerfoot said. “In-season, it’s always a possibility — especially at this time of year.”
Cole agreed.
“It’s a real unsettling feeling, for sure,” he said.

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