Midseason Draft Board: The 2026 NHL Draft and the Teams Holding the Cards

Halfway through the season, New Jersey has turned the draft into a private asset summit.

By Brodie St. Germain

Halfway through the season, the 2026 NHL Draft is already exposing which front offices have a plan and which ones are hoping the standings eventually soften the blow. The teams with the least success right now are getting first access to the future, and that is usually where the strongest teams are built — or at least where the best excuses are made.

This is not just a mock draft. It is a midseason map of leverage, and the Devils are the clearest outlier. New Jersey owns eight first-round picks, which is enough to make the rest of the league feel like it showed up with a coupon while the Devils arrived with the warehouse key.

Buffalo’s blueprint

Every team in this draft wants to be the next Buffalo — not because of the pain, but because Dr. Richard Painter proved last season that a real plan, executed with conviction, can turn a reset into a winner. That kind of season changes how the rest of the league views a rebuild. It also raises the bar for every front office that thinks patience alone counts as a strategy.

Buffalo’s example matters because it showed that asset collection only works when it leads somewhere. The lesson is simple: build with purpose, move with discipline, and make sure the picks are part of a plan rather than just a pile.

Draft capital check

New Jersey enters the draft with the most leverage by a wide margin. Eight first-round picks is the sort of haul that turns one team into the gravitational center of the entire opening round. Columbus and Minnesota also have enough capital to shape the class, but they are still operating in the Devils’ shadow.

At the other end, Dallas and Vegas are light on draft assets, which makes each pick more important and each miss more expensive. When one club can absorb mistakes and another cannot, the gap between the two can widen very quickly.

The teams holding the room

New Jersey has the clearest ability to influence the entire first round, not just because of volume, but because it can move in several directions at once. Shawn Lawrence can swing for a franchise player, scoop up value later, or simply keep everyone else guessing all weekend. Todd Parry has the chance to land multiple core pieces in Columbus, while Jake Mednick has the flexibility to strengthen both Minnesota’s top end and its depth.

Ryan Shumay in Los Angeles could be sitting on the league’s most valuable first-round chip but instead its Lawrence in the stands in Los Angeles cheering on the opposition, and league sources say Ryan Williams in Vancouver has made viewings on Chase Reid a priority. Mark Mead in New York has enough ammunition to stay active, while Grant Semelman, Chuck Clark, and Colin March all have enough leverage to matter in their own way. None of them, though, are holding the kind of draft capital that has turned New Jersey into the room’s loudest presence.

That said, it is still early enough that anyone treating this mock like stone tablets is probably the same person who calls the first week of preseason a final evaluation. The rankings will move, the board will shift, and general managers will keep pretending they saw it all coming.

Full first-round mock with ownership

1. New Jersey Devils — via LA 1. Gavin McKenna is the kind of player who can change a franchise’s direction fast, and New Jersey would be taking the obvious swing.
2. Colorado Avalanche — COL 1. Ivar Stenberg brings pace, creativity, and a real scoring touch, which fits Brodie Ellis’s style well.
3. Vancouver Canucks — VAN 1. Chase Reid is a smooth defenseman with top-pair upside, and Ryan Williams reportedly has his eyes on him.
4. New York Rangers — via OTT 1. Carson Carels offers size, calm, and strong two-way projection, the kind of profile Mark Mead tends to value.
5. Montreal Canadiens — MTL 1. Keaton Verhoeff is a heavy defenseman who can eat minutes and move the puck for Josh Gordon.
6. New York Rangers — NYR 1. Caleb Malhotra is a powerful center with play-driving ability that fits a club trying to stay dangerous.
7. Boston Bruins — BOS 1. Tynan Lawrence adds pace, edge, and competitiveness, which feels very Blair Marshall.
8. Seattle Kraken — SEA 1. Nikita Klepov is a creative winger with dangerous hands, the kind of upside Colin March can dream on.
9. Minnesota Wild — MIN 1. Ethan Belchetz is a big winger with speed and a heavy offensive game, the sort of bet Jake Mednick likes to make.
10. Detroit Red Wings — via PHI 1. Oscar Hemming is a skilled forward with pro habits, a strong fit for Larry’s board.
11. Anaheim Ducks — via PHO 1. JP Hurlbert is a smart scorer who finishes plays, and Dan Rudd has usually leaned toward that kind of profile.
12. Philadelphia Flyers — PHI 1. Ilya Morozov is a competitive center with pace and detail, a useful fit for Jeffery Dyck.
13. Chicago Blackhawks — CHI 1. Wyatt Cullen is a poised offensive talent with quick processing, the kind of player Matthew Rehman can build around.
14. Winnipeg Jets — WPG 1. Maddox Dagenais is a power-forward type with upside, which suits Chuck Clark’s appetite for directness.
15. Columbus Blue Jackets — CBJ 1. Ryan Lin is a smooth puck-moving defenseman, a Todd Parry style pick if there ever was one.
16. New York Islanders — NYI 1. Adam Novotny is a skilled winger who can play through contact, a useful piece for Andrew Moorhead.
17. Nashville Predators — NAS 1. Tommy Bleyl is a reliable forward with a well-rounded game, very much in Fielding Howard’s lane.
18. New Jersey Devils — via NJ 1. Xavier Villeneuve is a modern defenseman with mobility and offense, exactly the kind of value Shawn Lawrence keeps stockpiling.
19. New York Islanders — via BUF 1. Yegor Shilov is a creative forward with a sneaky scoring touch, another nice swing for Andrew Moorhead.
20. Carolina Hurricanes — CAR 1. Benjamin Macbeath is a versatile forward with good habits, the sort of player Chad Wise can slot into a system.
21. New Jersey Devils — via PIT 1. Liam Ruck is a skilled winger with pace and edge, a useful addition for Lawrence’s pile.
22. New Jersey Devils — via STL 1. Brooks Rogowski is a high-motor forward with pro traits, giving New Jersey another versatile option.
23. Edmonton Oilers — via CGY 1. Markus Ruck is a play-driving winger with energy and skill, a clean fit for Andrew Bradley.
24. New Jersey Devils — via DAL 1. Casey Mutryn is a smart forward who handles pace and detail well, a steady bet for Shawn Lawrence.
25. Washington Capitals — WAS 1. Ryder Cali is a rangy skater with upside and touch, and Grant Semelman gets another useful option.
26. New Jersey Devils — via VGK 1. Chase Harrington brings work rate and secondary scoring, the kind of depth swing New Jersey can afford.
27. New Jersey Devils — via EDM 1. Adam Nemec is a cerebral offensive player with real touch, another piece for an already absurd pile.
28. Florida Panthers — FLA 1. Ryan Roobroeck is a big winger who profiles well near the net for Mike Clarke.
29. San Jose Sharks — SJ 1. Jaxon Cover is a creative forward who can make something out of nothing for Brent Abell.
30. Anaheim Ducks — via PHO 1. Rudolf Berzkalns is a responsible defenseman with quiet upside for Dan Rudd.
31. Toronto Maple Leafs — TOR 1. Jakub Vanecek is a steady defender with a clean projection for Mark Kostovski.
32. Tampa Bay Lightning — TB 1. Mathis Preston is a high-upside forward with pace and skill for Pierre Ouellette.

What matters most

The headline is not just who drafts first. It is who drafts often, and whether those front offices can turn volume into actual direction. New Jersey has the clearest chance to own the first round by sheer repetition, and the Devils have the kind of draft inventory that can change the organization’s timeline in one weekend. Columbus and Minnesota can add legitimate building blocks. Washington, Winnipeg, and Seattle all have room to matter, but none of them are operating with that kind of reach.

That is why this draft is already shaping the league before the picks are ever announced. Some teams are drafting for June. Others are drafting for survival. New Jersey, meanwhile, is drafting like it found the league’s lost and found and decided to keep everything in it.

CEHL All-Star Skills Competition: West 4, East 3

Seven events, three indignities. Two conferences. $2.5M in cheques nobody asked the accounting department to approve. And not a single backcheck all night.

There is exactly one evening a year when CEHL's best players are invited to show off with no opponent, no defensive responsibility, and no consequences whatsoever — which, if we're honest, is the precise set of conditions most of them have been quietly requesting since October. The Skills Competition is hockey with the hard parts removed: skate fast, shoot hard, thread a pass, embarrass a row of cones, and collect a quarter-million dollars for the trouble.

The stakes were arranged to matter just enough. Seven events, one $250,000 cheque per winner, and whichever conference banked the most events would walk into tomorrow night's game carrying the bragging rights — and the smugness, which is the real prize. The game itself is twenty-four hours away. Tonight was the cold open: a chance for forty-six stars to establish, loudly and at great expense, who fully intended to be a problem.

The West intended to be a problem. Here is how the evening came apart.

Event 1 — Fastest Skater

The one event with no suspense, contested purely because the schedule had a hole in it. Connor McDavid (NJ, East) put down a lap so fast the timing crew quietly asked him to run it again, on the working theory that their equipment had broken. It had not. He has won this thing in real life enough times that the league more or less stopped sending out invitations, and tonight he treated it like a man jogging to his own coronation. Mathew Barzal — an actual former champion of this exact event, a detail worth pausing on — gave it an honest, full-effort run and finished a clean, distant second, the gap between them rendering like a printing error. There was a brief, beautiful moment where the East bench allowed itself to believe one win meant something. It did not. It meant McDavid is fast, which everyone already knew.

Winner: Connor McDavid (East) — $250,000. Scoreboard: East 1, West 0.

Event 2 — Hardest Shot

The one night a year a defenseman is permitted to be the main character, and Mikhail Sergachev (EDM, West) had no intention of spending it being gracious about it. He wound up from the point and put a puck through the radar gun hard enough that the operators stopped to inspect the gun for structural damage. A booming slapshot is the single thing a sim blueliner waits all season to be appreciated for — the assists go unnoticed, the minutes go unthanked, but the cannon, the cannon gets a trophy — and he accepted the gratitude with compound interest. Draisaitl posted the hardest number among the forwards and it was still, comfortably, a rounding error behind. Somewhere in the stands, every defenseman in the league nodded once, in solidarity, and said nothing.

Winner: Mikhail Sergachev (West) — $250,000. Scoreboard: East 1, West 1.

Event 3 — Accuracy Shooting

Four targets, four pucks, and Nikita Kucherov (WAS, East) approaching the whole exercise as a minor administrative interruption to an otherwise quiet evening. He cleared all four in an order that strongly implied he'd run the geometry in his head before stepping on the ice, then turned and skated off before the final target had finished its descent to the floor. The defining image of the night was his complete refusal to celebrate — no fist, no glance, nothing but the faint irritation of a man who felt it had taken a beat too long. Aleksander Barkov, precise as a Swiss customs official, needed one extra puck, hit all four anyway, and looked genuinely apologetic about the inefficiency. It was the most polite second-place finish in the building's history.

Winner: Nikita Kucherov (East) — $250,000. Scoreboard: East 2, West 1.

Event 4 — Stickhandling / Obstacle Course

Through the cones, around the pucks, over the line and back — Tim Stutzle (VGK, West) turned the obstacle course into a personal highlight reel and dared the clock to keep pace. The kid is carrying an absurd +24 in the sim, the best mark of any forward in the field, and he handles the puck like it owes him money and he intends to collect in front of witnesses. Kent Johnson ran it flashier — there were two moves in there the broadcast had to slow down to confirm were legal — and Artemi Panarin ran it prettier, all silk and misdirection. Stutzle simply ran it faster, and the obstacle course, much like opposing defensemen, has never once cared how pretty the thing was that just went by it.

Winner: Tim Stutzle (West) — $250,000. Scoreboard: East 2, West 2.

Event 5 — Passing Challenge

The least glamorous event on the entire card, and the one Sebastian Aho (DAL, West) appears to have been quietly manufactured in a lab to win. Bank passes off the boards, give-and-gos, saucers laid flat onto a dime from thirty feet — every target struck dead center, every repetition executed with the facial expression of a man calmly filing his quarterly taxes. There was no flourish. There was no wasted motion. Roughly half the building did not realize he had won until the scoreboard informed them, which is, in fairness, the single most Sebastian Aho way for anything to ever happen. He collected the cheque, nodded, and was nearly out the tunnel before the applause caught up to him.

Winner: Sebastian Aho (West) — $250,000. Scoreboard: East 2, West 3.

Event 6 — Save Streak

Goalies, a conveyor belt of the league's most dangerous shooters, and one simple rule: stop them until you can't. With every elite scorer in the building lined up for a free run at him, Igor Shesterkin (TOR, East) turned the event into a public statement of intent the night before puck drop. He stoned shooter after shooter with the visible, simmering personal offense of a man who had heard the over/under on tomorrow's game and chosen to take it as a slur on his character. McDavid he robbed. Kucherov he robbed with feeling. Connor Hellebuyck, the best goalie in the field and the unluckiest man in the league by a country mile, matched him stop for stop and lost on the final shooter by a single save — which is, depressingly, the most accurate summary of his entire season anyone has yet produced.

Winner: Igor Shesterkin (East) — $250,000. Scoreboard: East 3, West 3.

Event 7 — Breakaway Challenge

Tied 3-3, the conference title on the line, and the league — in a decision it will spend years defending — handed the deciding vote to the fans, which is to say it handed the deciding vote to pure chaos and a decibel meter. Connor McDavid went first and did something genuinely outrageous: full speed in, between the legs, toe-drag back, top corner, the entire arsenal in a single motion. The building roared, assumed that was the title, and began reaching for their coats. Then Leon Draisaitl (PHO, West) stepped up, deadpan as a tax audit, made it look like he'd been woken from a nap to do it, and pulled off something fractionally more absurd at what appeared to be one-third the effort. The fans gave it to him by a margin thin enough to start a genuine, multi-year conference grudge. McDavid was robbed. The East bench filed a formal written complaint that, to this day, no one has read and no one intends to.

Winner: Leon Draisaitl (West) — $250,000, and the conference title. Final: East 3, West 4.

Final Scoreboard

Conference title: West, 4 events to 3. Prize money distributed: $2,500,000 — ten cheques, zero receipts, and an accounting department that stopped answering its phone somewhere around the sixth.

The Hush Money ($250K Each, No Questions Asked)

Seven cheques went to the winners. Three more went, just as quietly, to the men who turned a no-defense exhibition into a public examination of their limitations. The league pays these out at the same $250,000 rate — partly out of fairness, mostly to ensure nobody describes what they saw to the press. Real money, unmarked envelope, no eye contact. Bombing in a skills competition is hard to do. Doing it this thoroughly deserves compensation.

$250,000 — The "We Logged Your Lap As A Stoppage" Cheque → Ross Colton (OTT). Ottawa needed a representative and Colton, a fine honest checking forward whose entire professional value lives in the defensive zone, was the name that came up. They entered him in Fastest Skater. He posted a lap so unhurried the timing crew initially recorded it as a whistle, then a TV timeout, then — once a skater was confirmed to be involved — a personal-best for a man who has never been asked to do this and clearly hopes to never be asked again. The cheque is for showing up to a sprint event built for the one thing he was not invited here to do.

$250,000 — The "That Was Your Hardest One?" Cheque → Brock Faber (WPG). A defenseman gets exactly one night a year to be appreciated for a cannon, and Faber — 25 points, a −7, and a Winnipeg blueliner whose game is built on tidy first passes rather than blowing the net off its pegs — stepped into Hardest Shot and registered a number the radar gun normally reserves for a warm-up wrist shot. Sergachev's winner arrived with a structural-damage warning; Faber's arrived with a polite request that everyone please not make this weird. The $250K is for a slapshot that the gun, in fairness, did technically detect.

$250,000 — The "All Four Pucks, None Of The Targets" Cheque → Jack Roslovic (MTL). Montreal's man in Accuracy Shooting, where Kucherov needed four pucks for four targets and treated the whole thing as an imposition. Roslovic needed all four pucks too, and a couple of bonus ones the officials located for him out of pity, and at the end of it the targets stood largely undisturbed, like a row of witnesses who saw nothing. He left the ice to the specific silence reserved for a man who has just performed a magic trick in which nothing disappeared. The cheque is for the effort, which was visible, sustained, and entirely unrewarded by the scoreboard.

The West walks out with the skills title, the swagger, and a one-event head start on the trash talk. The East walks out with a former fastest-skater champ finishing second, a goalie who took the whole thing personally, and a breakaway grievance it fully intends to litigate. None of it counts tomorrow. The puck drops in twenty-four hours, the scoreboard resets to zero, and Draisaitl and McDavid — who split the headline acts tonight down the middle — get to do the only kind of settling that actually matters. Bring a coat. It may go long.

CEHL All-Star Weekend Is Here

Forty-six players. Two conferences. Three nights. Roughly $6.25 million in prize money that exists mainly because nobody in the building had the authority to say no.

Once a year, CEHL quietly repeals the single most important rule in hockey — the one where you're supposed to stop the other team from scoring — and declares a three-day holiday from accountability. The nets come off their moorings. The defensemen are read their rights and then told to ignore them. Six goaltenders are handed a helmet, a blocker, and a note that reads good luck, you're on your own. This is All-Star Weekend, and it is the most fun anyone in this league will have while doing the least defensible version of their jobs.

We've taken the forty-six most productive humans in the league, divided them into an East and a West that have no shared history and no business disliking each other, and handed them a genuinely irresponsible amount of cash to settle it. Up top, your scoring leaderboard is a two-man heist: Mark Scheifele sits alone at 50 points, serene as a man who stopped checking the standings in October, with Leon Draisaitl one tantalizing point back at 49 and visibly annoyed about the gap. Behind them, a 41-point logjam that resembles a knife fight in an elevator. Somewhere down the standings, Owen Tippett has spent the whole year being the only functioning light fixture on a last-place Columbus club and earned his ticket anyway. And Connor Hellebuyck made it with a heartbreaking record and the haunted look of a goalie whose team forgets he exists for stretches of every game.

They're all here. They've all been told defense is optional. Let's meet the rosters.

Eastern Conference All-Stars

Goaltenders

Defensemen

Left Wing

Center

Right Wing

Western Conference All-Stars

Goaltenders

Defensemen

Left Wing

Center

Right Wing

Read those two columns and the matchups write themselves: McDavid's generational speed pointed straight at Stutzle and his preposterous +24. The most professionally irritating man in the sport, Brad Marchand, sharing East dressing-room real estate with the quietest superstar in the league, Sebastian Aho, who scores forty points a year and somehow leaves no fingerprints. Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes on the same blue line, neither of whom has agreed to play defense since roughly birth. It is a roster built for offense, by offense, with goaltenders included strictly for comedic timing.

Night One — The Skills Competition

The warm-up act, with real money stapled to it. Seven events: Fastest Skater, Hardest Shot, Accuracy Shooting, Stickhandling, the Passing Challenge, the goalie Save Streak, and the fan-voted Breakaway Challenge that will, historically and inevitably, end in a formal complaint nobody reads.

Every event winner pockets a clean $250,000. But it's bigger than the individuals — it's East vs West, and whichever conference banks the most events takes home a team title that does not technically exist and will be invoked, loudly, at every available opportunity for the next twelve months. Skate fast, shoot hard, dangle a cone, get paid, get insufferable.

And because the league is nothing if not even-handed, three more $250,000 cheques are set aside for the night's most memorable failures — the league calls it the Hush Money, pays it in unmarked envelopes, and asks only that the recipients never describe what happened. Excellence and humiliation, same denomination.

Night Two — The All-Star Game

The main event. East versus West, one sheet of ice, and a collective defensive commitment we are setting expectations catastrophically low on. There will be goals. There will be goalies openly renegotiating their relationship with the sport. There is a non-trivial chance the final score is more appropriate to a basketball arena.

And at the end — the hardware. Five prizes, from $250,000 up to a cool $1,000,000, awarded not for the usual nonsense but for the single best thing that happens on the ice that night: the best goal, the best moment, the best act of breathtaking selfishness, whatever the evening produces. Then three more $250,000 Hush Money cheques for the players whose night went the other direction entirely — same envelopes, same silence, considerably more wincing. Creative categories. Real cheques. A judging panel with no notes and no scruples.

The Schedule

1. Tonight — you're reading it. The rosters, the matchups, the rundown.
2. Tomorrow — the Skills Competition. One conference walks away insufferable.
3. The night after — the All-Star Game, and the big-money hardware.

A Few Things We Are Prepared To Guarantee

We've run this weekend before. We know how it goes. So in the interest of managing your expectations downward, here is what the league is willing to put in writing:

• A goal will be scored in the first minute by a player nobody was assigned to cover, and three different skaters will point at each other.
• At least one goaltender will allow a shot so soft it qualifies, under international law, as an act of surrender. He will then smile, because none of this counts.
• Quinn Hughes will be on the ice for a highlight-reel goal. Which team scores it remains, as ever, an open question.
• Marchand will do something. We do not know what. We know we will have to review it in slow motion, and we know we will be annoyed.
• The Breakaway Challenge will produce a robbery, a controversy, and a conference that feels deeply, righteously wronged. This is not a risk. It is the entire point.
• The accounting department will stop answering its phone somewhere around the third cheque, and will not reappear until the following fiscal quarter.

Forty-six players. Three nights. Nearly $6.25 million in prize money that exists purely because no one with veto power was in the room. The East and the West are about to spend a weekend trying to embarrass each other at high speed, and we are not going to do a single thing to stop them.

Lace 'em up. Bring a coat. This one's going long.

Midseason Money, Muscle, and Futures

Brodie St. Germain reads the league’s trade shuffle

By Brodie St. Germain

Brodie St. Germain studies the trade market the way Bay Street studies a company that just said “strategic realignment” on an earnings call: with suspicion, caffeine, and a calculator already halfway through the autopsy. He is a French-Canadian analytics animal, the kind of operator who prices aging veterans by the shape of their decline, prospects by the probability they become useful before everyone forgets why they were exciting, and draft picks by the uncomfortable fact that most of them are just polished uncertainty.

This latest batch of deals does not feel like random shopping. It feels like a midseason redrawing of the league’s internal map. Some clubs are buying immediate help, some are buying structure, some are buying future options, and some are buying famous names because hockey executives, like the rest of us, are not entirely immune to theatre.

Washington and Phoenix

Trade: Washington acquires Jonathan Toews
Trade: Phoenix acquires 1.1M

This is a straightforward veteran-for-flexibility transaction. Toews still brings value in a reduced role, especially in the faceoff circle and in lower-event, structured minutes. Washington is not buying the superstar version anymore, obviously, but it is still buying a player who can help a serious team in specific situations.

Phoenix gets the cap relief and not much actual hockey. Which is fine, sure, if your preferred system is “we will admire the balance sheet while the other team takes the faceoff specialist.” Washington gets the player. Phoenix gets the abstraction.

Grade: Washington B, Phoenix C

Carolina and Toronto

Trade: Carolina acquires Ian Cole and Noel Acciari
Trade: Toronto acquires Evander Kane and Luke Schenn

This is one front office buying floor and the other buying volatility. Carolina gets two players who make hockey coaches feel safe: Cole with his veteran defensive structure, and Acciari with his bottom-six utility, physicality, and total lack of decorative nonsense.

Toronto’s side is louder. Kane still brings offense, power-forward energy, and enough unpredictability to make the whole thing either useful or exhausting. Schenn is exactly what he has always been: big, rugged, limited, and forever one good playoff round away from being described as indispensable. Carolina gets the cleaner safety play. Toronto gets the more combustible upside.

Grade: Toronto B, Carolina B-

Nashville and New Jersey

Trade: Nashville acquires Neal Pionk
Trade: New Jersey acquires NAS 3rd 2027, VGK 3rd 2026

Pionk is the actual NHL asset here, and that matters. Right-shot defensemen with real minutes and credible puck-moving value do not arrive on the market every day. Even in a less flashy season, he is still the kind of player teams can use immediately and trust in meaningful situations.

New Jersey gets two third-round picks, which is a respectable futures return in the way a savings bond is respectable: not fake, not worthless, but not exactly helping you on the power play next Tuesday. Nashville gets the living, breathing defenseman. New Jersey gets the paperwork.

Grade: Nashville B, New Jersey C+

Toronto and Edmonton

Trade: Toronto acquires Niko Mikkola, EDM 1st 2028, EDM 3rd 2026
Trade: Edmonton acquires Mattias Ekholm, Martin Misiak

This one is a real pricing puzzle. Mikkola is not a throw-in. He is a legitimate NHL defenseman with size, reach, and enough utility to matter in a real lineup. Add a first-round pick and a third-round pick, and Toronto is suddenly holding a very respectable basket of current value and future leverage.

Edmonton, however, gets the best current player in the deal. Ekholm remains the strongest present-day asset on either side, the kind of defenseman contenders trust without needing a committee meeting. Then there is Misiak, who is not just filler either. He has real prospect credibility as an energetic winger with skating, awareness, and a reasonably high floor.

Toronto gets volume, future leverage, and a useful defenseman. Edmonton gets the best NHL player and a credible prospect. That is one of the rare deals on the board where both sides can defend themselves without sounding ridiculous.

Grade: Edmonton B+, Toronto B

Toronto and Phoenix

Trade: Toronto acquires Nazem Kadri, FLA 2nd 2028, PHO 2nd 2027
Trade: Phoenix acquires Alexander Ovechkin

This is where the market stops pretending to be subtle. Toronto gets Kadri, who still looks like a meaningful NHL center with enough offense, edge, and competitive nastiness to matter in real games. Add two second-round picks and Toronto is getting a serious asset bundle, not just a familiar name.

Phoenix gets Ovechkin, which means the hockey return is mixed with monument value. He is still the kind of name that bends a room, sells a building, and changes the emotional profile of a team just by walking into it. The question, as always with late-stage stars, is whether the acquiring club is paying for actual impact or for the beautifully preserved memory of it. Toronto gets the portfolio. Phoenix gets the icon.

Grade: Toronto A-, Phoenix B-

New Jersey and Edmonton

Trade: New Jersey acquires Neal Pionk, BUF 2nd 2026
Trade: Edmonton acquires Jacob Middleton

Middleton is a useful player. He is physical, reliable enough, and exactly the type of defender playoff teams always decide they need once the calendar turns serious. Edmonton getting him is sensible and entirely defensible.

But New Jersey gets the stronger package. Pionk still has real value as a right-shot defenseman, and the Buffalo second-rounder adds a legitimate futures chip on top. That is the better overall asset basket unless someone in Edmonton is privately convinced Middleton is secretly a franchise theorem. The Devils do nice work here. Quietly. Efficiently. Almost rudely.

Grade: New Jersey B+, Edmonton B-

Edmonton and Minnesota

Trade: Edmonton acquires Mikael Backlund
Trade: Minnesota acquires Gustav Nyquist, EDM 2nd 2028, EDM 4th 2029, 2M

This is one of the more honest trades on the board. Edmonton wants a grown-up two-way center and gets one. Backlund still brings competent, low-drama, matchup-friendly hockey, which is exactly the kind of veteran value serious teams keep buying because it keeps helping.

Minnesota, though, gets a layered package. Nyquist still has veteran usefulness, the second-rounder matters, the fourth-rounder is a nice extra, and the added money gives the Wild a little more leverage in the structure of the deal. This is a classic certainty-for-package trade. Edmonton gets the cleaner player. Minnesota gets the broader basket.

Grade: Edmonton B, Minnesota B

Vancouver and Detroit

Trade: Vancouver acquires Sutter Muzzatti
Trade: Detroit acquires Victor Mancini

This is the scouting department deal, the kind of transaction that causes everyone outside the prospect staff to nod politely and search the names afterward. Mancini is the more established, projectable piece, a defense prospect with real size and a clearer NHL pathway if the development continues properly.

Muzzatti is more of a longer-range size bet. He has intriguing dimensions, some skill, and the kind of developmental profile that can either turn into a clever organizational win or disappear into the general fog of hockey optimism. Detroit gets the more clearly projectable defense prospect. Vancouver gets the bigger swing on long-range center upside.

Grade: Detroit B, Vancouver B-

Minnesota and Vegas

Trade: Minnesota acquires Philip Broberg, William Karlsson, VGK 1st 2028, VGK 3rd 2029
Trade: Vegas acquires Robert Thomas

Now this is a real market-shifting trade. Vegas gets the best single player in the deal, and that matters immediately. Robert Thomas is a premium top-six center, the kind of player contenders do not acquire unless they are very serious about what they think the next few years look like.

Minnesota, however, gets a serious package. Broberg has taken a meaningful step and no longer looks like pure projection; he looks like a live top-four defense asset. Karlsson remains a credible two-way center with an established NHL track record, and then the Wild add a first-round pick and a third-round pick on top. That is not spare change. That is a real package with present utility and future equity.

So who wins? Vegas gets the best player, which is usually the strongest argument in the room. Minnesota gets multiple useful assets, one of them still rising, plus meaningful draft capital. That makes this less a robbery than a philosophical split: Vegas buys certainty and star-level center play; Minnesota spreads its risk across depth, trajectory, and futures. As usual, the side with Robert Thomas gets the glamour. The side with Broberg, Karlsson, and the picks gets the portfolio manager nod.

Grade: Vegas B+, Minnesota B+

What it all means

Taken together, these deals look like more than routine trade churn. They read as a midseason redrawing of the league’s internal map. Toronto is clearly trying to remake its identity on the fly — tougher, older, noisier, and more willing to live with risk if the short-term payoff is real. Edmonton is choosing sturdier adults and matchup reliability over headline hunting. Minnesota is operating like a club that wants layered value and future leverage without completely abandoning the present.

Vegas, meanwhile, does what Vegas does: it spots the best player in the room and goes directly for him. Washington buys utility. Carolina buys structure. New Jersey does some quiet portfolio building. Phoenix alternates between cap logic and theatre, which is at least entertaining.

That is the larger lesson of this board. Midseason trades are not just about swapping names; they are about organizations declaring what they think they are. Some see a window. Some see a bridge. Some see a future. And some, naturally, look at the whole mess and decide the best strategy is to buy the star and ask questions later.

We have reached the mid point folks! That means All Star game and claim festivities. 

As of this point you can also trade players signed in free agency. More to come shortly!

CEHL Memories

So many come to mind. I think the thing that blows my mind most is retiring players that we scouted and drafted or as Colin mentioned, claimed. 

So many players have gone thru the ranks here and I'm not sure why they stick in my mind but Dustin Penner, Dustin Brown, Mattias Nordstrom, Jere Lehtinen…some classics.

Lastly, the GMs that have had their limelight…The MDHQ movement, the Sousamaphone,  and there was always a ‘Don’t we have a forum for this?' Theres still a few around that will remember those.

CEHL MEMORIES 

I have so many memories i could speak of, but my favorite memory is more about an Era of CEHL , rather than a moment.  Once upon a time free capitalism existed within CEHL. Im not saying it was better but it was a hell of a ride. Cory wrote a song about it. 

I am of course referring to the Claim Game.

Once upon a time GMs would lose sleep over it.   You might have to stay awake to send off emails exactly at the moment a player would turn 22.   You might have a meltdown over your own failure to claim a guy by his 22nd birthday.

I once spent time making sure my computers clock was actually synchronized to the proper world clock to the .0001 of a second.

The was something satisfying and disappointing when you fire off your claim at that precise moment only to learn some other GM you didn't speak to about the claim. , also fired off a claim and now it was down to the silent bid

Which was absolutely ruthless 

It was a one time bid where basicly the best AAV won. And this is all for a 22yr old claim.   

I used to generate pages of names and birthdays.   And I had them programmed into my phone with reminders.  There came a point where this was nearly a daily occurrence,   both, The search of names. And the moments to make claim  

And there was no limit to how many could be claimed. , to the point where I tried to claim the entire KHL.   Once limits came in I had to give away pages of names and birthdays.

This era yielded so many memories and stories, most of them born out of greed and survival.  It was free capitalism and it was great. 

NO VICTOR, NO VICTORY - A PHILLY STORY

Jeffery really said “we’ll be fine without Victor” and immediately proved that was a lie. The moment Victor Herman got shipped to Edmonton (Andy, of course), Philly didn’t just lose a player — they lost the entire concept of winning.

Every game since has felt pre-decided: leads vanish, comebacks stall, and the win column looks like it got traded in the same deal. Meanwhile, Andy plugged Victor straight back into victory and—shocking—started stacking wins.

Jeffery didn’t just lose a trade — he deleted the only part of victory that mattered. Now he’s stuck trying to win with just a “Y”… which is fitting, because that’s what he keeps screaming as he cries himself to sleep.

CEHL Memories

• Using a line editor to save your lines and then updating them to the site manually. (I think that's how it was back in the day)
• Taking over the Rangers that didn't have a 1st rounder for the next 2 drafts and that had just lost Henrik Lundqvist because he was 22 and not created.
• Trying really hard to get a 4th rounder for Max Talbot.
• Talking about sim leagues all day long at work with Toronto (Mark) and Minnesota (Jake)
• Drafting a player in the CEHL and no matter what you follow their whole career.

CEHL Memories

Former Washington GM Josh “Pishenko” Stone recounts an encounter with Smitty himself on the streets of Toronto from the glory days of the CEHL

“Oh man, I was just telling a story the other day that I totally forgot about… remember that time a few of us got together in Toronto? And that guy Brad Smith, who was your friend who passed away (poor guy…) and he didn’t know my face so we saw him go into a bank to use the ATM. And I went in and waited behind him and then when he turned around, I just told him not to cause a scene and get inside the black Honda…. Then when he got outside the bank, he just started running down the street and ran right past all of you guys laughing… then he slowly realized what was going on! Lol”

Do you have any funny or amusing CEHL anecdotes you’d like to share that don’t involve Pacific Coliseum and Whale Music? Please share them with us here at CEHL Memories