5 NHL Contenders That Failed to Answer Their Biggest Trade-Deadline Question

This year's playoffs are ripe with peril. The Eastern Conference is shaping up to be a battle royale among the very best teams in the NHL. The Western Conference tilts that are lined up will have an "anyone can win it" feel to them with the records being so close among the contenders. That type of competition put a special kind of pressure on this year's trade deadline.

The beauty of the NHL trade deadline is it provides a life preserver for contending teams to find a player or players who can help put them over the top in the race for the Stanley Cup. Everyone is looking for some kind of help, a little something to give them an edge against their foes-to-be.

More than a few teams sought out and handled their business to best ensure their shot at the Cup. The Bruins, Rangers, Maple Leafs, and Hurricanes all added big-name players—some bigger than others—to boost their odds. Eastern Conference teams were particularly pointed about doing that, and for good reason. Although Western Conference teams were more modest, teams like the Oilers and Kings did their best to meet specific needs.

But then there are a few teams who didn't do that. Whether it's because they have a lot of confidence in their rosters or the trade market wasn't particularly friendly to them, needs were not met and questions will follow them through the rest of the season and into the playoffs.

We picked out five such teams who couldn't get moves across the finish line on deadline day. Most of them did make some moves, just not the ones that helped them the most. Is your team one of them, or did we miss out on one? Hit us up in the comments and let us know about it.

The Pittsburgh Penguins didn't turn out too well when I put together our winners and losers of deadline day/week/month, so it's understandable that they're sitting here ignominiously having not done what's best to contend.

It's fair to question whether they're actually contenders or not given that they're in the Eastern Conference and would more than likely be a wild-card team destined to face either the Boston Bruins, Carolina Hurricanes, or New Jersey Devils in the first round of the playoffs.

All that aside, the Penguins' biggest issues headed into the deadline were for them to figure out if they're going for it and to go full bore into that decision with their moves. General manager Ron Hextall decided they were in it to win it and had to find the best ways to make the team deeper at forward and on defense.

The main problem they had, however, was the salary cap. They needed to waive Kasperi Kapanen, Brock McGinn and Mark Friedman in order to make any moves in the first place and lost Kapanen to the Blues on waivers. Even though that freed up $3.2 million against the cap for this season and next, it took away some of their depth up front.

While McGinn and Friedman cleared waivers, they sent McGinn and a 2024 third-round pick to Anaheim to land defenseman Dmitry Kulikov. They added middle-six forward Mikael Granlund and bottom-sixer and former Penguin Nick Bonino but traded Teddy Blueger to Vegas. While Granlund has more offensive upside, the younger Blueger and Bonino are kind of a wash.

Granlund's offense runs hot and cool year-to-year, and his advanced stats the past couple seasons were far from impressive in Nashville. If you felt the Penguins were a depth forward and veteran defenseman away from going deep in the playoffs, then you're feeling pretty good about these moves. Everyone else, however, is rightfully skeptical of how it will play out because the same questions about depth persist.

The Dallas Stars have been front-runners in the Central Division for most of the season. Led by Jason Robertson, Jake Oettinger, and Roope Hintz, the Stars' offense and goaltending are strong, and their defense is led by Miro Heiskanen. These are key reasons why they've been so good all year, but lately, cracks have appeared in the foundation.

Since January 1, the Stars have gone 10-7-7, and their lead in the Central Division is down to three points on the Minnesota Wild and six on the Colorado Avalanche, who have three games in hand on them.

Dallas has one of the better offenses in the NHL and have allowed the fourth-fewest goals. So what's wrong? The Stars get wrecked in one-goal games, going 8-5-13. While there's no specific type of player(s) you can acquire to address that, it does point to needing more scoring or better defending.

Dallas opted to go for more goals and added Evgenii Dadonov from Montréal and Max Domi from Chicago. Dadonov had 18 points in 50 games with the Canadiens but has three in three games with Dallas. Domi, meanwhile, had 49 points in 60 games with Chicago, including 18 goals.

That's good enough...right? Well, not exactly, not when the Wild went all out to add forwards Marcus Johansson, Gustav Nyquist, and Oskar Sundqvist to get deeper there and an offensive threat on the blue line with former Star John Klingberg. While the arms race in the East was on an entirely different level, only a few West teams really got into the mix, and Dallas wasn't one of them.

The Stars' additions may work out in the end, but for now, we're not impressed.

Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff isn't known for being liberal when it comes to trades, but if there ever was a time for the Jets to get a lift, now would be it.

The Jets have slipped in the Central Division race to a point where they may wind up with a wild-card spot rather than a top-three position in the division now that the Colorado Avalanche are getting healthier by the day.

Winnipeg has Vezina candidate Connor Hellebuyck saving their bacon night in and night out, and as a team, they've allowed the seventh-fewest goals in the league. Their offense, meanwhile, is firmly in the middle of the pack—more in the neighborhood of the St. Louis Blues and Detroit Red Wings than with some of the top-tier goal scorers in the league. And that's despite having net-fillers like Kyle Connor, Mark Scheifele, and Pierre-Luc Dubois. Once you get beyond them, though, it gets dire.

The Jets tried to address this by adding Nino Niederreiter from Nashville and Vladislav Namestnikov from San Jose two days after he was acquired by the Sharks from Tampa Bay.

Combined, Niederreiter and Namestnikov have put up 43 points this season. That two-headed attack would slot in one point behind Blake Wheeler for sixth on the Jets in points. Individually, however, their production is all too similar to what they've gotten from their inconsistent bottom six all season long. And with Cole Perfetti out of action in the meantime, it's a little more difficult.

Scoring goals is going to be tough in the West (more specifically in the Central) with goalies like Dallas' Jake Oettinger, Colorado's Alexandar Georgiev, and Minnesota's tandem of Marc-Andre Fleury and Filip Gustavsson. It's great that Winnipeg has their own top goaltender to combat them, but the offense might struggle to help him out even after the deadline.

The New York Islanders are a fascinating team. They have one of the best goalies in the league with Ilya Sorokin—and he's capable of winning games, and perhaps playoff series, on his own. It's not an old adage, but it should be that if you have the best goalie, you have the best chance to win. This is how the Islanders operate from front to back, much to the chagrin of teams that like to skate freely and have fun.

For as much as the Islanders frustrate opponents, their own offense frustrates themselves. They've scored the 10th-fewest goals in the NHL, and while they're getting solid play from Brock Nelson, Mathew Barzal and Anders Lee up front and Noah Dobson on the back end, they could use more scoring. This was a big reason they went out and acquired Bo Horvat from Vancouver in late January. Horvat was in the middle of a career-year with the Canucks, and now he's got eight points in 12 games on Long Island.

If you go beyond those players, things get bleak quickly. The Islanders have only two other players in double digits in goals (Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Zach Parise) and two other players with 20-or-more points (Ryan Pulock and Josh Bailey).

The Islanders need more offense if they're even going to make the playoffs, never mind should they get there. They'll be fighting with Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Ottawa, Florida, Washington and Detroit to make the postseason, and leaning on Sorokin to hold it down against everyone is a daunting task even for a player as good as him.

Preventing goals is great, but scoring them wins games, and the Islanders just don't score enough to be considered a serious contender.

The Seattle Kraken have been an incredible story this season. It's only their second in the NHL, and they're in the thick of the playoff race in the Western Conference and even have a shot at winning the Pacific Division.

How the Kraken have been able to do it is fascinating.

Seattle has scored the fifth-most goals in the league, and it's not just one line or even one particular player doing the damage—it's all four lines and their defense. While it's a true team attack that's overrun opponents this season, there are a couple of things that have prevented them from true greatness: their bottom-five penalty kill and their collective goaltending.

The "fun" part about trying to fix the penalty kill is that sometimes it just means addressing your goaltending, and Kraken GM Ron Francis opted to stick with what they've had all season from Martin Jones and Philipp Grubauer. Jones' .888 save percentage in 41 games and Grubauer's .895 in 26 is not confidence-inducing by any means, but a lot of their troubles have come when they're down a man or two.

Penalty-kill struggles can sometimes be from the goaltending, or it's because of the system the coaches put in place. It's a real chicken-or-egg kind of thing, but choosing not to look into goaltending is interesting because it's what could be their undoing come playoff time.

Expansion teams having success early creates temptation to try and speed up the building process to cash in on the excitement the playoffs provide, but the Western Conference is so wide open that even a slight upgrade at the position is what could be the difference between being happy to be there and making a deeper run into the playoffs.