The 2026-27 NHL season opened on Sept. 29, but teams did not wait until opening puck drop to start improving their rosters.
The Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets completed a trade involving six players on Sept. 28, most notably sending Kirill Marchenko to Toronto and Matthew Knies to Columbus.
Then on Oct. 23, the long-anticipated Connor Hellebuyck trade finally happened, as he landed with the Devils. And on Nov. 1, the Kraken and Predators swapped young forwards (Shane Wright for Matthew Wood).
Throughout the season, this page will be your home for analysis of all the big deals by ESPN reporters, with the most recent swaps at the top.
Jump to:
Wright to NSH
Hellebuyck to NJ
Marchenko to TOR
A pair of players once central to their former franchise’s plans were moved Sunday in a deal involving the Nashville Predators and the Seattle Kraken.
The Predators traded winger Matthew Wood to the Kraken in exchange for center Shane Wright. The trade itself was a 1-for-1 swap involving two teams that are each vying for a playoff spot as American Thanksgiving gets closer.
Here’s a quick glance at what it all means.
You will hear the words “potential” and “potentially” a lot regarding this trade. That’s what happens any time two teams choose to move on from a pair of forward that are still in their early 20s who were each, at one time, thought to be part of a blueprint going forward.
Wood and Wright both struggled to start the season. Wood has three points in 14 games while Wright has four in 14. But this trade potentially provides the Predators a player who is more of a known profile.
The reason Wright has been the subject of trade rumors the past few years goes back to the potential he showed as a draft prospect — he was taken fourth overall in 2022 — and during the 2024-25 season, when he had 19 goals and 44 points in 79 games. It was a strong baseline for a player who previously had 16 games of NHL experience over the previous two years because of a stop-start development process.
Even though he had only 12 goals and 27 points the next season, it at least proved he can reach double figures. Furthermore, he recorded double figures for a team that, over a two-year cycle, has been in the bottom 10 of goals per game.
It’s likely that Nashville will slot Wright in as the second-line center, with Ryan O’Reilly, Jack Drury and Alexander Kerfoot as the other pivots. They are hoping to return to the playoffs for the first time since the 2024, when they were eliminated in the first round.
Wright became expendable for a few reasons, including inconsistencies since that promising 19-goal campaign. But also because the Kraken have more productive options down the middle. Berkly Catton is second on the team in points (11), while Frederik Gaudreau leads them in goals (seven). Matty Beniers is averaging 0.50 points per game while logging the most ice time (17:43 per game) among Kraken forwards. And Chandler Stephenson, a natural center, has gone to wing and leads the Kraken with 12 points in 14 games.
Adding Wood provides the Kraken a natural winger who can provide secondary production while also providing some size on the wing; the former University of Connecticut star is listed at 6-foot-4 and 202 pounds. He is also adept at using his size to get to the net front.
Wood scored 17 goals and 30 points in his first full NHL season in 2025-26, and there’s potential for more — and can fit within the Kraken’s team construct. While Wood does shoot from the perimeter, he is effective enough at getting into the low slot and net front too.
Pairing him with playmaking forwards like Beniers, Catton, Gaudreau and Stephenson, along with puck-moving defensemen such as Vince Dunn and Brandon Montour, could lead to him hitting the 20-goal benchmark.
Technically speaking, Connor Hellebuyck‘s suspension from the Winnipeg Jets did end Friday. It just had a different outcome with the three-time Vezina Trophy winner being traded to the New Jersey Devils.
Hellebuyck, who won the Hart Trophy in 2025, will go to the Devils in exchange for forward Dawson Mercer, forward Nick Bjugstad, goaltender Nico Daws, prospect center Alexander Command, a 2027 seventh-round pick and a 2029 second-round pick.
Let’s take a look at what this means for both teams and how each front office performed:
How Devils general manager Sunny Mehta arrived at this place goes back to one of his earliest moves. He knew the going rate to acquire a starting goaltender based on the return New Jersey received in late June when Mehta traded Jacob Markstrom to the Florida Panthers. Markstrom’s trade brought back a return of three forwards. It was a move that gave Mehta, or any GM, more insight into what it would take to land arguably the greatest goaltender of his generation in Hellebuyck.
Trading Markstrom is also the reason acquiring Hellebuyck — or any proven No. 1 goalie — became a priority for New Jersey. That became even more evident with how the Devils started the regular season. Opening their first 10 games with a goaltending tandem of Jake Allen and Daws had the Devils entering Friday in the second and final Eastern Conference wild-card spot — with the context that they appear to be a much better team than their place in the standings shows.
New Jersey has one of the strongest defensive structures in the NHL this season. The Devils came into the weekend allowing the second-fewest high-danger scoring chances per 60, the third-fewest scoring chances per 60, and the 10th-fewest shots per 60.
They also have a 59.74% shot share in 5-on-5 play. That figure is so strong that only the defending Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes (59.79% shot share) have held on to the puck more than the Devils in 5-on-5 play. So how is it that a team that controls the puck and limits high-danger chances, scoring chances and shots is in the last wild-card spot? Especially when it averages the 12th-most goals per game?
An argument could be had that it’s because of the Devils’ goaltending. They have the 13th-lowest team save percentage in 5-on-5 play at 89.95%. Across all scenarios, they have an .880 team save percentage, tied for the 23rd in the league.
Placing Hellebuyck, who has faced the second-most shots in the NHL since 2021-22, in New Jersey’s system could see the Devils win more frequently by pairing his skills with their defensive infrastructure. And if it does? That’s the possibility that Mehta and the Devils are banking on: that Hellebuyck can help them emerge as a legitimate threat to challenge in the Eastern Conference and perhaps have serious designs on winning a Stanley Cup this season.
That’s the short-term view of how this can be digested. The long-term view is that the Devils, barring some sort of massive change, are going to be expected to challenge for a Stanley Cup with the 33-year-old Hellebuyck under contract for four more years at $8.5 million annually.
Building around homegrown talents such as Jesper Bratt, Nico Hischier and Jack Hughes has been a process. The Devils have used a variety of avenues from free agency to trades to build what they believe is the best possible team around a core that has since added another homegrown player in Luke Hughes. There have been times when the Devils look like they’ve been ready to aspire to more. But then there have been those moments when they’ve been left to ask probing questions about how they reach their desired destination.
Getting Hellebuyck has changed the conversation. Hellebuyck missing training camp because of his suspension means there is likely going to be an adjustment period. Nonetheless, adding the best version of Hellebuyck to a team that has proved it can consistently score and defend makes the Devils look like they’re on the verge of something major. But the regular season, while important, isn’t where this trade will ultimately be judged. The verdict will come in the playoffs, as the franchise seeks to win a Stanley Cup — one of the few accolades Hellebuyck doesn’t already have in his collection.
Any deal Jets GM Kevin Cheveldayoff was going to reach for Hellebuyck was one that had to help the franchise both immediately and for the foreseeable future. It appears this particular trade has a chance to do both, with the caveat that it was always going to be a challenge to find the perfect return for the best player the Jets have drafted over the past 20 years.
That’s why the place to start is with what it could mean for the Jets right now. Scoring was so much of an issue for the Jets in the 2025-26 season that three players — Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele and Gabriel Vilardi — combined to score 40% of Winnipeg’s goals. It was a drastic contrast compared with the 2024-25 season, when the Jets won the Presidents’ Trophy largely due to contributions from different parts of their lineup.
Scoring, at least to start the season, remains an issue. The Jets came into Friday ranking 25th in the league in goals per game at a rate of 2.60 per contest. Adding to those scoring challenges is how they’ve struggled to consistently create opportunities when they’ve had the puck. They are averaging the 12th-fewest shots per 60, the 13th-fewest scoring chances per 60 and remain around league average in terms of high-danger chances per 60. Plus, the Jets have the 11th-lowest shot share in 5-on-5 play at 47.30%.
Expecting Mercer to be the lone solution to those problems isn’t realistic. But it’s fair to expect that he’ll help by providing another option beyond Connor, Scheifele and Vilardi. Mercer is a three-time 20-goal scorer who finished last season with 20 goals and 42 points while averaging 18:13 in ice time. That level of production would have made him the Jets’ fourth-leading goal scorer and had him fifth on the team in points.
Mercer, who has one year of team control remaining after this season, has zero goals and four assists through 10 games. The 24-year-old’s ability to attain consistency is likely going to play an important role in a campaign that appears already to be at a sensitive stage. Winnipeg entered Friday with the same points total as the Colorado Avalanche for the second and final Western Conference wild-card spot.
The Avalanche have a Central Division-leading plus-10 goal differential. The four teams in the division that are either tied with or ahead of the Jets in the standings also have positive goal differentials, whereas the Jets currently sit at minus-3, having lost their past four games.
Bjugstad, who had six goals and nine points in 61 games last season, is still recovering from offseason pectoral muscle surgery that saw him begin the season on injured reserve. His initial diagnosis had him set to return at some point in the next four to six months, which places his earliest return around January. Bjugstad is in the final year of his contract, and it’s possible he could once again be a deadline day departure should the Jets seek draft capital if they’re out of the playoff chase. The Jets have 28 draft picks over the next three years after the Hellebuyck trade.
Daws, who is 2-2 with a 2.78 goals-against average and a .874 save percentage, is joining a team that has the fourth-highest save percentage in 5-on-5 play. He provides the Jets with a more proven alternative in net should they need it. The Jets have used Clay Stevenson in tandem with Stuart Skinner, but Stevenson came into this season with five games of NHL experience, whereas Daws already had 55 games and is more than familiar with the demands of being in a tandem at this level.
Getting Command, the 12th pick in the 2026 draft, gives the Jets another potential top-six or top-nine option for the future as he continues to develop in Sweden. Command has seven goals and 12 points playing in the under-20 Nationell against younger competition, while he has no points in six games while playing for Orebro in the Swedish Hockey League, the strongest league in the Swedish hockey system.
Less than 24 hours before the start of a new season, the NHL had its first blockbuster trade with the Blue Jackets trading Kirill Marchenko to the Maple Leafs.
Marchenko, along with forward Miles Wood and goaltender Elvis Merzlikins, heads to Toronto in exchange for forwards Matthew Knies and Steven Lorentz, defenseman Emil Andrae and a conditional 2027 second-round pick. Columbus will retain 18% of Merzlikins’ salary.
Here’s a look at how both teams fared:
Maybe the easiest — and most important — place to start is with Marchenko signing a six-year contract carrying a $12.5 million average annual value. Attaining cost certainty is always going to be key for teams, especially in this current landscape in which the price for a player’s services is subject to change with each new contract. This holds true for Marchenko.
He was under contract for one more year at $3.85 million, and one more year of team control as a pending restricted free agent. That left any team acquiring him facing one of two hypotheticals:
Would it be better for them to trade for Marchenko, let him play out the season, see how he looks in their lineup and then sign him to a long-term deal?
Or do they get a sign-and-trade done so they have him locked in for several years at what they believe is a manageable cost — at a time when every class of player is going to cash in, with top-line players at the top of that list?
Choosing the second option allowed the Leafs to avoid the seasonlong dilemma of deliberating on a long-term deal. That could prove to be a vital decision, with the expectation that Marchenko’s stats are likely to surge while playing alongside Auston Matthews for at least two seasons. Because although Marchenko played with talented centers in his time with the Blue Jackets, some believe he could reach the 40-goal mark for the first time in his career playing with the Leafs superstar. His career high is 31, scored in 2024-25.
His addition sets the Leafs up to have a first line with Jack Roslovic joining Matthews and Marchenko, while having a second line featuring William Nylander, John Tavares and rookie Gavin McKenna, the Penn State forward who was the first pick in the 2026 draft.
Matthews’ future is another subject for another time. Yet when it comes to Marchenko? Getting him signed long term provides the Leafs with more certainty. He is the seventh player on their active roster who has more than three years of team control remaining.
Other elements of this trade will come under question. That starts with whether it was prudent to add more to their salary cap starting next season knowing Knies, who is entering the second year of a six-year contract, was already on the roster at a cheaper salary of $7.75 million annually.
Then there are Merzlikins and Wood. Merzlikins is currently on IR after undergoing offseason shoulder surgery. He’s in the final year of his contract worth $4.428 million. When healthy, he’s another option for the Leafs in goal. But they could also move on from him later in the season to get help elsewhere. Wood, who went unclaimed on waivers, gives the Leafs a potential depth forward if needed.
There’s a challenge facing every front office that has a star player who wants out of town. Of course there will be other teams who want the player in question. Whether any of the proposed deals make sense usually ends up being the biggest hurdle to clear.
That’s what makes this particular trade for the Blue Jackets one that could work. Why? Because of how they stand to benefit both now and in the future.
Moving on from Marchenko, who led the Blue Jackets with 27 goals and was second with 67 points last season, meant Columbus had to find a comparable winger in return. Knies appears to be just that. The 23-year-old, who had 23 goals and 66 points last season, gives the Blue Jackets a sizable option on the edge who can generate offensive opportunities in a top-six role. Knies will face questions about how his production will fare without Matthews, but his ability to attack the net could prove critical for a Columbus team that was in the top 10 in scoring chances per 60 minutes but was around league average in high-danger chances per 60.
Columbus could use Knies on its top line next to Adam Fantilli and Kent Johnson, while having a second line featuring Conor Garland, Sean Monahan and Valeri Nichushkin, who arrived this summer in trade.
Knies’ $7.75 million AAV also helps, as Fantilli is set to earn $13.75 million annually starting this season. In total, Columbus has seven players set to make more than $7 million annually who have four or more years left on their current deals.
Beyond Knies, Lorentz provides the Blue Jackets with another proven option they can use in various spots as needed. He scored seven goals and 18 points in 71 games last season after eight and 19 in 2024-25, his first campaign with the Leafs. And while the Blue Jackets do have a bottom six in place, Lorentz gives them someone who logged more than 158 short-handed minutes last season; this could prove beneficial for a team that was 28th on the penalty kill last season.
Emil Andrae — who was already traded once this offseason, from Philly back on June 16 — is an option on the back end. He had 13 points in 61 games with the Flyers last season.
