The Pittsburgh Penguins are a surprising 7-2-2 and are in second place in the Metropolitan Division, four points clear of third place and the wild card spots, albeit with one or two games in hand.
The once only confirmed seller on the NHL trade market, general manager Kyle Dubas didn’t trade away veteran players such as Rickard Rakell or Bryan Rust, as he seemingly signed innocuous free agents to fill spots. But now everyone is being rewarded with wins.
Perhaps Dubas intended never to trade away several veterans unless more than well compensated in return. After all, that little smile in July before the rookie camp began when he talked about setting a “sky high” price on Rust had every look of someone in control of the situation.
As Dubas talked of resetting the roster, other teams publicly stated that a return to the playoffs this season was the priority. The Boston Bruins had every intention of immediate revival following a turbulent 2024-25 season.
“The team that we currently have, healthy, with the additions we intend to make this summer, I anticipate that we’ll have a playoff team and play meaningful hockey at this time of year in 2026,” CEO Charlie Jacobs said at the season-ending press conference with team president Cam Neely and GM Don Sweeney.
Fast forward four months, Boston is currently 5-7-0 and in next-to-last place in the Eastern Conference. The trade rumors began to pop this week that teams are calling about top center Pavel Zacha. TSN’s Pierre LeBrun noted that Boston sees the 28-year-old Zacha as a long-term fit, but the Bruins are also a team that traded its beloved 36-year-old captain, Brad Marchand, last season.
Hopes and reality may be on a collision course in Boston.
The Calgary Flames wanted to build on last year’s emergence as a playoff contender. They finished just short but made an unexpected run at stealing a wild-card spot.
“We’ve just got to take that step to find one, two, three more points,” center Nazem Kadri told the Canadian Press on the eve of the 2025-26 season.
Kadri and GM Craig Conroy have sounded optimistic tones about the present. Still, top defenseman Rasmus Andersson remains unsigned beyond this season, and the Calgary Flames are cratering in the standings with a Western Conference-worst 2-8-1 record.
Numerous reports indicate teams are calling about Kadri, but Conroy isn’t yet ready to give up the ghost and sell off his 35-year-old leader, nor his defenseman, but there’s no doubt that Calgary needs to win games immediately, or numerous players will begrudgingly become available.
The Buffalo Sabres are treading water, which seems to have become the organizational pattern for the forever forlorn hosts beside Lake Erie. Players are unhappy. Captain Rasmus Dahlin, top center Tage Thompson, Alex Tuch, and more are already unhappy with the Sabres’ dull offseason.
Tuch is a pending free agent and tabled further contract talks as the season approached. Buffalo already traded JJ Peterka to the Utah Mammoth. Peterka was another who was unhappy with the organization that has missed the playoffs for 14 years running.
Buffalo is a perfectly mediocre 4-4-2 after 10 games, which won’t satisfy anyone, and is riding journeyman goaltender Alex Lyon instead of presumed No. 1 goalie Ukko-Pekka-Luukkonen.
The Buffalo organization could be forced to act as players put themselves on the trade block sooner than later.
The New York Rangers and Artemi Panarin haven’t yet agreed on a new contract, and the “Bread Man” is a pending UFA with an uncertain future with Mike Sullivan and the Blueshirts.
The under-30 pending free agents include Martin Necas in Colorado, Adrian Kempe in Los Angeles, Nick Schmaltz in Utah, and Mason Marchment in Seattle. All of those players would have waiting suitors the moment their GMs come to the conclusion that they cannot re-sign the players.
And the trade rumors of Rakell, who is now on injured reserve for the better part of the next two months after surgery on his left hand, and Rust seem like the past.
“I spent the summer in Canada, I probably heard them more than you,” Rust quipped on the first day of training camp.
As the Penguins stack wins in October, trying to prove they are better than any external prediction, the trade market could become saturated with valuable players, none of whom were available when the hockey world focused solely on Dubas and the Penguins.
Perhaps it was a missed opportunity to sell when the market was thin, but perhaps Dubas and others are indeed defining a successful Penguins season as one in which they are successful on the ice.
With the public pressure that Sidney Crosby’s people applied in the weeks leading to the NHL season (including his agent Pat Brisson publicly saying Crosby should be in the playoffs every season), Dubas has every reason to hold firm and let the season play out before making moves. With each win, success this season is increasingly redefined.
The Penguins were on no one’s list as primary playoff contenders, but at the close of October, and just a few weeks before American Thanksgiving, which is an oddly prophetic but unofficial line of demarcation to determine expected playoff teams, the Penguins are solidly in the hunt.
And not on the trade market.
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