NHL Trade Rumors December 14

With the announcement of the season starting on January 13, many NHL teams have started to re-engage in trade talks and looked at free agents to add the finishing touches before the start of the season. Many teams sparked interest in unloading big contracts, trading for young stars and signing the remaining big name free agents.

The Vegas Golden Knights are shopping Max Pacioretty and are listening to trade offers for Johnathan Marchessault, Marc-Andre Fleury, and Alec Martinez.

This offseason, the Golden Knights made some big splashes, signing top defenseman Alex Pietrangelo to a massive contract. The Golden Knights have made some efforts to clear some cap space by trading away Nate Schmidt and Paul Stastny earlier in the offseason. Now with the season soon approaching, the Golden Knights have just under a million in cap space and would like some more flexibility. Pacioretty, Marchessault, Fleury and Martinez are all older players making a decent amount of money that are expendable for the Golden Knights.

The Boston Bruins have interest in trading for Noah Hanifin. In return, the Calgary Flames are interested in Ondrej Kase.

The Bruins are in desperate need of a defensemen. After losing Torey Krug and Zdeno Chara (probably not coming back), their defense is looking weak. Noah Hanifin struggled last season and the Flames might want to ship Hanifin out before the Seattle Kraken expansion draft when they will have a tough time protecting all of their defenseman. In return for Hanifin, the Flames want Ondrej Kase who is a young winger that has shown some promising signs but didn’t play too well in his short stint with the Bruins last season. A trade revolving around Kase and Hanifin could be very possible.

Winnipeg Jets are waiting until the 2021-22 offseason to trade Patrik Laine when more teams will have the cap space to trade for him

All throughout the offseason, it seemed very likely that Patrik Laine would get shipped off to a new team for a new start. The former second overall pick hasn’t been given a sufficient opportunity in Winnipeg and both sides have shown their unpleasantness. Many teams have shown interest in Laine but have backed away due to the pandemic and the flat cap. Depending on Laine’s production this upcoming season, it will determine whether Laine will be staying or leaving Winnipeg.

Alex Killorn and Hoffman are potential fits for the Nashville Predators.

The Lightning are still dealing with a tough cap situation, having no cap space to sign their RFAs, Anthony Cirelli and Erik Cernak. The Lightning are trying to get rid of some of their veteran players such as Killorn. The Predators are in need of wingers and with the Lightning willing to give up Killorn, the Predators could be able to pick up Killorn for cheap. Hoffman. on the other hand, is the best free agent available and the Predators have more than enough cap space to offer Hoffman a good contract.