How the NHL’s proliferation of no-trade clauses affects the Blackhawks

Trade-protection clauses once reserved for only the NHL’s elite players have become ubiquitous leaguewide.

A whopping 320 players this season have some type of no-trade clause (NTC) in their contract, according to PuckPedia and a recent story in The Athletic.

That’s an average of 10 per team. And because players aren’t eligible for NTCs until they become an unrestricted free agent — or in the years of an extension that extend the date they would have become one — that means more than half the NTC-eligible players have them.

‘‘I think we’ve gotten past the way no-trade clauses were originally intended,’’ NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in a radio interview this month.

The Blackhawks have contributed to the trend. Bowen Byram and Patrick Kane got full no-movement clauses (NMCs) in their new six- and two-year deals this summer. An NMC for Connor Bedard will kick in for the final year of his contract in 2030.

Alex Vlasic will have a 10-team NTC starting in 2028 (for his last two years), Spencer Knight will have a 15-team NTC starting in 2028 (for his last year) and Frank Nazar will have a 20-team NTC starting in 2031 (for his last two years).

Tyler Bertuzzi, Teuvo Teravainen, Ryan Donato and Cole Smith all received partial NTCs that allow them to exclude between five and 10 teams each.

NHL general managers, including the Hawks’ Kyle Davidson, give these NTCs out as sweeteners to persuade players to sign or in exchange for slightly reduced salary-cap hits. They have become almost expected.

The NHL likely will try to insert some NTC limits into the next collective-bargaining agreement in 2030. In the meantime, the proliferation will continue.

For the Hawks, the biggest NTC-related challenge probably won’t involve players with NTCs already on their roster. Some of them aren’t actually that restrictive, and they view many of these players as cornerstones anyway.

Instead, the biggest challenge will involve persuading talented players around the league not to block potential trades to the Hawks with their own NTCs in the future.

The scrutiny surrounding NTCs ignited this summer when stars such as the Red Wings’ Dylan Larkin and the Jets’ Connor Hellebuyck demanded trades but wielded their clauses to prevent their teams from widely shopping them.

Larkin has been derided for initially indicating, according to reports, that he only would accept a deal to the Panthers, Golden Knights or Wild — despite having demanded the trade himself. That would have given the Wings extremely little leverage to get a fair return.

NHL stars are becoming increasingly aware of how much power they hold. They also are becoming increasingly picky about where they want to play — something NBA players, for example, have been doing for years.

And it turns out they generally want to play for winning teams.

That’s where things get tricky for the Hawks. They could use a few more high-end players to help them climb out of their rebuild and establish themselves as a playoff contender, but many high-end players will keep them on their no-trade lists until after they’ve done that.

That dynamic risks creating a phenomenon in which today’s good teams stay good indefinitely because good players keep forcing their way to those teams. On the flip side, bad teams would stay bad indefinitely for the same reasons.

Improving from within might become the only way to climb that hierarchy, and that’s one silver lining for the Hawks. Their plethora of prospects gives them a better chance of doing that than other franchises that depend largely on external additions.

The Hawks also might benefit from Chicago being an attractive hockey destination aside from on-ice results, as well as from the skyrocketing salary cap potentially widening the payroll gap between wealthier and poorer franchises.