Trade Scenarios for 6 NHL Stars Who Need a Fresh Start

If there's something that's tough to watch in sports, it's when good players are in situations where things aren't going the way they wanted.

Whether it's because their successes have been limited or they've excelled on teams that just can't get over the hump, finding out whether the grass is actually greener on the other side of the fence is the kind of thing we all wonder about.

We've picked out a handful of top players around the NHL who are in situations with their current team where we can't help but ponder if they'd be better off elsewhere. We've also sniffed around at some teams that would be great fits for them too.

We're almost a month away from NHL training camps opening. Business is going to pick up and our exercise here is more about spit-balling some ideas and leaning into some discussions we've been having throughout the offseason.

We're all ears for your ideas, though, which means you can give us your thoughts in the comments.

It's somewhat odd to think that the Minnesota Wild would want to move goalie Filip Gustavsson, but they're in a bit of a funky position.

Gustavsson splits starts with legendary netminder Marc-André Fleury in Minnesota, and with the amount of respect Fleury commands from everyone and his history as a big-game goalie, his presence demands respect. What also helps out is Fleury still has a strong game, generally speaking.

Last season, Fleury and Gustavsson each had their troubles, and the Wild weren't able to fall back on them to stabilize things through an assortment of injuries and poor play elsewhere.

And even though Fleury's career is winding down, he's the guy who gets to decide when he retires. And with how things played out for him in Vegas in getting the bum's rush out the door, no one's too eager to make a high-profile decision that would be met with universal derision.

What else makes it uncomfortable is the Wild have 2021 first-round pick Jesper Wallstedt knocking very loudly on the door to the NHL. The question for them is whether the future is now or not too far down the road. Ideally, having Wallstedt and Gustavsson be their pairing once Fleury moves on or retires would be great, but Minnesota GM Bill Guerin was a teammate of Fleury's in Pittsburgh and he's not about to force him out the door.

While many teams that had obvious goaltending issues addressed in the offseason (Ottawa, New Jersey), a team like Detroit, which still has a lot of questions in goal with Alex Lyon, Cam Talbot and Ville Husso, could be an ideal target for Gustavsson.

With how well Gustavsson performed in his first full season with the Wild two years ago, there's a bright future for him...it just might have to be fulfilled elsewhere.

Listen, it can't be a trade-related story if we're not talking about Mitch Marner and the Toronto Maple Leafs. It's just that this is a little different given our premise.

Marner has been a brilliant player for the Leafs, and Toronto has clearly been better off having him than not having him. But the playoff failures over the past few years have offered up different scapegoats, and the most recent one is Marner. This season also happens to be Marner's final year under contract with the Leafs, which naturally causes trade talk to happen.

But Marner wears a lot more of the disappointment in Toronto harder than a lot of guys on the team because he's from Toronto (Markham if you want to be really annoying about it) so the pressure is stronger and the spotlight shines harsher when things go wrong.

Marner has the uncanny ability to not outwardly show if the noise that surrounds the situation bothers him or not, but persistent scrutiny would wear on anyone, right?

Trading Marner is not a new idea, and it's one we've certainly kicked around a lot, but if ever there was a team that was made to acquire a superstar player with a massive salary-cap hit while also offering a situation that would be a bit less noisy off the ice, it's Vegas.

How the Golden Knights would make a trade for Marner work out on their end or for what the Leafs would demand in such a move would require a Ph. D. in accounting and sports management. But if the Leafs were going to move their next best player behind Auston Matthews, sending him to the Western Conference would be the right idea, and Vegas is always more than willing to entertain a massive trade if it means acquiring an elite player.

The Columbus Blue Jackets trading high-scoring winger Patrik Laine feels more like a matter of "when" and not "if" it will happen.

Laine is coming off a very difficult year, which saw him deal with injuries as well as time away in the NHL/NHLPA player assistance program. But he's been working out like mad this summer and preparing to make his return to action fully focused on returning to his role as one of the league's elite sharpshooters.

Rumors have been building slowly about where Laine might go next. His old team, the Winnipeg Jets, has been mentioned, as have the Minnesota Wild. The Jets make sense because they have younger players like Cole Perfetti and prospect Rutger McGroarty, who they could part with to make a deal palatable to the Blue Jackets. But Laine returning to Winnipeg, while a potentially heartwarming story, doesn't strike us as the place that makes most sense.

Laine going to the Wild would give them a unique weapon in their lineup and give them another different type of scorer for teams to pay attention to.

Having Kirill Kaprizov and Matthew Boldy gives them a lot of skill and a nose around the net, but the addition of Laine would ideally give them someone to open up the ice because of his ability to shoot the puck. Not to mention what Laine would do to give the Wild's power play another facet in its attack.

We're all rooting for Laine to bounce back after overcoming injury and personal issues because he's one of the most fun players and personalities in the league, and getting him to the State of Hockey would allow him a great place to start anew.

We're aware that Carolina Hurricanes forward Martin Necas re-signed with the team this summer on a two-year, $13 million contract after he elected to go to arbitration. And while it's a good thing they didn't go all the way to court to get a new contract done, it sure still feels like the trade chatter that bubbled up before he re-signed is only on pause and not gone for good.

Necas has shown the past couple of seasons that his evolution through Carolina's system and into the NHL paid off, but he hasn't cracked through the Hurricanes' lineup to be on the level with teammates Sebastian Aho and Andrei Svechnikov. Youngster Seth Jarvis has hopped Necas in the pecking order, and while Necas still had a great season (24 goals, 29 assists), his numbers were down from two years ago when he had career highs in goals (28) and points (71).

His average ice time per game dipped by more than a minute from two years ago to last season, and while Svechnikov's injury two years ago played into that, it's a little disappointing to see everything come back to earth a bit after such a big season.

This is where a team like the Boston Bruins finding a way to acquire Necas and set him up next to fellow Czech David Pastrnak is the kind of move that would make a ton of sense. It might not make a lot of sense from Carolina's perspective to help out another team in the Eastern Conference, but for Boston it would be a great plan.

Having Necas jump in and be the younger heir apparent to David Krejci on a line with Pastrnak is the kind of video game move that would work in real life.

If it's felt a little awkward seeing Trevor Zegras in Anaheim the past year or two, you're not alone. The young Ducks star forward has all kinds of skill and talent, but with GM Pat Verbeek in charge and 2023 first-round pick Leo Carlsson being the new hotness in Orange County, it kind of feels like Zegras is out of sight and out of mind.

After all, Zegras did miss 51 games last season after dealing with an ankle injury that required surgery and the Ducks had another tough season—and whether he played or not, there was no stopping that.

But Anaheim's rebuild is looking sunnier after the 2024 draft in which the team added forward Beckett Sennecke and defenseman Stian Solberg with its first-round picks and forward Lucas Pettersson in the second.

With Carlsson, Mason McTavish, Pavel Mintyukov and Olen Zellwegger among others in the NHL and more on the way, the idea of moving Zegras isn't totally out of bounds, which is something teams like the Montréal Canadiens, New York Rangers, Carolina Hurricanes and Buffalo Sabres should keep at the front of their minds.

At 23 years old, Zegras is still young, and his track record is already filled with points and highlight-reel clips of what he's capable of doing. For any of those teams to add Zegras to the mix where he could be surrounded by more current talent it would be a boon. For Zegras to get out of Anaheim and onto a team that is or may soon be a contender, it would allow him to show off more of what he can do in a situation that's a better fit for him.

This summer was pretty awkward for New York Rangers captain Jacob Trouba. His team made no bones about looking to trade him this summer, and when talks with the Detroit Red Wings never came together, both sides had to forge ahead and pretend that none of that ever happened.

Here's the thing, though, Trouba going somewhere else now is probably the best thing for him. The sting that goes with your team trying to trade you can be put away professionally, but personally it would be tough to forget that. Heck, what would you do if your boss told you they wanted to let you go but decided to keep you on because they were more or less stuck with you? No thanks!

While Trouba can more-or-less decide where he would want to be traded because of his 15-team no-trade clause, if a contender anywhere else in the NHL said they wanted to acquire him, it would be hard to say no, wouldn't it?

Granted, he's already playing for one of the top Stanley Cup contenders in the NHL, but with two years left on his contract, if another top team in the league calls and says they'd want to take him on board, it would be hard to pass on that opportunity.

Still, a 15-team no-trade clause doesn't cover all the teams in the league. It could leave open the possibility of a non-contender adding him and thus ruining his hopes of helping the Rangers win a Stanley Cup or winning a Cup at all, but if a team like Colorado or Edmonton or Dallas or Vegas or Florida came calling...why not, right?