With Trade Deadline Over, Players Can Rest Easy Knowing Where They Stand

The NHL trade deadline is a spectacle. And why shouldn’t it be? Sports are entertainment, after all, and the trade deadline is a day on which team’s strategies become clear to their fans. Either they are buying so that they can go for it now or selling to better prepare themselves for the future.

It’s a day where narratives begin to be drawn, like the arms race between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Boston Bruins, and when the seeds for future rivalries are planted, like the eventual playoff series between the Nashville Predators and the Winnipeg Jets.

All day and in the weeks leading up to it, members of the media get to flex their insider muscles in front of an audience of millions. The fans get to sit back, grab their popcorn, and watch the show as rumours fly about the biggest names in hockey.

Will their team face the music and buy into that rebuild? Or will they load up and set their crosshairs on Lord Stanley’s Cup? Nobody knows for sure until it’s over, but we’re happy to I hypothetically tear our teams and players apart. An army of keyboard warriors waging war through our monitors.

And while the noises of this war intensify, taking up more airtime on sports radio and more of the screen space on Sportscenter, the battle on the ice rages on. Players continue with their daily routines. Video, training, practice, games. They know the deadline is approaching, but they do their best to ignore it, which is increasingly difficult in today’s world when your name shows up in a tweet suggesting your team is trying to get rid of you by 3:00 P.M. on Monday.

Sure, some players can just turn off their social media, but we’re talking about kids in the mid-20s here. I’m 28 and I can’t stay away from my social feeds for more than an hour!

Besides, even if they can avoid their Twitter and Instagram feeds, it’s on every TV screen in the airport when your team lands for their next road game. It’s on the newspaper that’s sitting on your coach’s desk. It’s on the landing page of all your favourite sports news sites.

Make no mistake. The players are aware of what’s being said about them.

“We’re very anxious about what’s going to happen on trade deadline and leading up to it,” Victor Hedman said to Pierre LeBrun in a recent article for The Athletic. “We’re such a close-knit family in this room.”

In the article, LeBrun referred to this anxiety as “the usual nervousness of a group that doesn’t want to lose a member”. The usual, indicating that this is a recurring feeling for teams at every trade deadline. And why shouldn’t they be nervous? At any moment, they are at risk of losing a colleague to a competitor in exchange for a new team member who may or may not gel with the room. In the case of a winning team, they could be messing with an irreplaceable chemistry.

But hockey is a business and trades are a big part of it. Players are expected to remain professional and accept the changes as they come. “For us, it’s about focusing on what we can control, really,” Hedman added to his quote above.

And what they can control is what happens on the ice. It’s the game. Now that the 2018 trade deadline has passed, there’s no more worrying about if you will be playing for or against your team next week. A collective sigh can be felt in locker rooms everywhere as players let the relief wash over them. Now they know that this is their squad and they can get to work and focus on the task at hand.

For Hedman and the Lightning, that task is winning a Stanley Cup. It will be no easy feat considering all of their Eastern Conference opponents bulked up over the last couple of days.

For the fans of good teams and bad, the fun is just beginning. There is the draft lottery and the draft itself for teams who have thrown in the towel, and there are the Stanley Cup Playoffs for those who loaded up.

For the media, new narratives are already emerging as teams hit the ice for the final stretch of the 2017-18 season. Are the Boston Bruins’ additions enough to survive a seven game series against the Tampa Bay Lightning? Do the Philadelphia Flyers have what it takes to make a run in the East? Is Tomas Tatar enough to give the Vegas Golden Knights a legit shot at the Cup?

The 2018 trade deadline was a thrilling ride, but it’s time for the attention to return to what’s happening on the ice instead of in offices and war rooms.

The next spectacle is about to take place.