Mailbag: Potential moves heading into Draft; Hall of Fame voting process

NHL.com's Over the Boards mailbag is back for its first offseason installment. As usual, senior writer Dan Rosen sifts through your questions sent to him on X and answers them. To participate in future mailbags, send your questions to @drosennhl on X and use #OvertheBoards.

Are you anticipating more significant trades this week prior to and during the draft? If so, from which teams? -- @MrEd315

Absolutely. 

Trades already have (Brady Tkachuk to the Florida Panthers) and will continue to dominate the offseason player movement. The class of unrestricted free agents is relatively underwhelming save for a handful of impact players (Alex Tuch, Sergei Bobrovsky, John Carlson, Rasmus Andersson, Anthony Mantha and maybe, just maybe, Alex Ovechkin), so the real juice will come in the trades that are still to be made.

The Detroit Red Wings have to figure out the Dylan Larkin situation. Larkin has requested a trade. That doesn't mean the Red Wings have to move him now, but the last thing they want is an untenable situation with their captain. That never works. So will they move him, where and what will the price be? There is a blueprint for cost with the Ottawa Senators getting three first-round picks, including Nos. 9 and 25 in the 2026 Upper Deck NHL Draft, from the Panthers for Tkachuk. 

The Senators are looking to move some of the picks they got to get an impact player or players in return. It'll be quite interesting to see what they do now that they're loaded with draft capital and have about $25 million in salary cap space.

The Dallas Stars have to figure out the future of Jason Robertson, who is a pending restricted free agent. He could sign long term in Dallas, or the Stars could trade him, potentially a sign and trade. 

The New York Rangers have to determine if they're keeping or trading center Vincent Trocheck. There could be a domino effect with Trocheck depending on the Larkin situation and how that plays out.

If the Panthers are going to let Bobrovsky go to the market and become an unrestricted free agent, what does that mean for their goaltending? They could look to acquire a goalie in a trade. Along those lines, what is Connor Hellebuyck's future with the Winnipeg Jets? 

The Minnesota Wild are always going to be active in the trade market with general manager Bill Guerin always ready to swing for the fences. Larkin would be a perfect fit for the Wild, who need a top-six center, but does Minnesota have the assets to get him? That remains to be seen.

The trade market is where it's at this offseason.

Are we in the Super Team era? If we are, does the NHL care? It looks like players got together and said, 'We need to request trades to get to a team that can win.' Is this a slippery slope? Is the NHL becoming the NBA? -- theashcity

We are in the era of player empowerment, which can but doesn't necessarily correlate to a super team era. 

The fact is players are increasingly taking more ownership of their own situations. They are using trade requests and the clauses in their contracts (no-movement or no-trade) to engineer the process. They are weaponizing contracts that are close to expiring by saying they will not re-sign when the deal is up, which puts pressure on their current team. They are agreeing to shorter term contracts aimed at putting pressure on the organization to prove to them that they should want to stay longer term. It all is with the intent of having more control about where they are now and where they could go next. It's a change in direction from what we've seen in the past, especially in the years when the salary cap was flat coming out of COVID-19, but it proves that players want to win and they're willing to do what it takes, what is within their contractual power, to orchestrate the best situation possible for themselves. They are well-educated about the League and they talk. And with more cap space available, every team has the ability to add contracts that they couldn't a few years ago.

However, to say it's a super team era would be to discount the teams that have created or are in the process of creating a winning culture through belief in their core and style of play, staying consistent in their approach and building around what is already in place. The Carolina Hurricanes are the perfect example. The Panthers, Colorado Avalanche, Tampa Bay Lightning, Vegas Golden Knights and Stars have done it, albeit in different ways. The Wild and Montreal Canadiens are doing it. So are the Buffalo Sabres. The Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, San Jose Sharks, Utah Mammoth and Anaheim Ducks are in the early stages of creating that type of consistency and culture. 

Those, of course, are the teams you're seeing acquiring players like Tkachuk and on approved lists for players like Larkin. It's because they have or are building a track record of doing what is necessary to win, and a big part of that is doing right by the players. All 32 teams are playing by the same salary cap rules. It's what they do within the parameters of the rules that makes the difference in where top players want to play.

Considering Brady Tkachuk's trade, are there any UNTOUCHABLE players now? Even McDavid? -- @gelboustany

This goes back to the question above. There are no untouchables anymore because players are taking more control of their own situations through the various avenues available to them. The Senators didn't want to trade Tkachuk. They wanted to see it through with him. General manager Steve Staios stated that multiple times in his press conference Monday, but the feeling was not mutual, so they did what they felt was in the best interest of the Senators. The Edmonton Oilers would have preferred Connor McDavid to sign a max deal instead of a two-year contract, but that's not what McDavid wanted, and if he says he won't sign another deal with the Oilers they're going to have to act accordingly. 

The so-called untouchable players now are the younger players still on their entry-level contracts or coming off their ELCs and looking for the second deal with a team that per the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement controls their rights, including the initial RFA process. Macklin Celebrini, Connor Bedard and Matthew Schaefer fall into that category. Gavin McKenna will fall into it. They are not untouchable because it's still a never-say-never sports world, but they're as close to it. But as they age up and gain more control of their contractual status that will change and the generation coming after them will be the so-called untouchables.

There's no transparency with the Hockey Hall of Fame voting process, is there? So, no one really knows what criteria, if any, the Selection Committee uses and likely never will. Do you see any avenue where that could change in the future? -- @IronCaniac

The public criteria are the eligibility requirements and the cap on number of inductees in each category. Those are listed on the Hockey Hall of Fame's website. The 18 members on the Selection Committee are forbidden, according to Hockey Hall of Fame rules, from releasing their votes and what led to those votes. That is the way the Hall of Fame operates and if you know anything about the Hall of Fame you know it is rooted in its traditions, so it would take a seismic shift in thinking for what is private to become public. So, to answer your question, no, I do not see an avenue now where the lack of transparency in the annual voting process changes right now. However, there is precedent for change. About 10 years ago, the Professional Hockey Writers' Association began making it mandatory for its members to publicly release their ballots for the postseason awards they vote on. There was previously little transparency in that process.

Do you think a three-way trade of Zach Werenski to Minnesota, Quinn Hughes to New Jersey and a lot of fun stuff to Columbus works? -- @NJDtootant

I included this question just because it's fun to talk about these things. They're the conversations friends have, but there's so much that goes into these things from the perspectives of the teams, players, general managers, agents, etc. 

Do I think a trade like that works? No, because the Columbus Blue Jackets aren't trading their Norris Trophy-winning defenseman for "a lot of fun stuff." He's a cornerstone player on the team and they're going to attempt to win with him unless or until he says he wants to play somewhere else and forces their hand into making that happen. The Wild acquired Hughes with the intent to make him a centerpiece of their team and to add around him, so they're not going to move him now. The New Jersey Devils would love to get Hughes from the Wild to have him join with his brothers Jack and Luke in New Jersey, but this proposed deal is so crazy they likely would have to part with Jack and/or Luke to get Quinn.

So, no, this one is pretty darn farfetched, but I like where your head is at. Silly season wouldn't be fun if everyone stayed serious. Keep 'em coming.