Category: Sports News

The Ducks proved they are all-in for a push to their first playoff berth in eight years by acquiring defenseman John Carlson ahead of Friday’s NHL trade deadline. The Kings, meanwhile, started building for the future, making acquisitions and trades to address their depth and bolster their number of draft picks.

The Ducks (34-24-3), who entered Friday second in the Pacific Division, just a point behind Vegas, haven’t had a winning record since 2018. But general manager Pat Verbeek signaled the team’s long rebuild is over, trading first- and third-round draft picks — the kind of picks he has long hoarded — to Washington late Thursday for Carlson, 36, an offense-minded blue liner who led the Caps with 36 assists and is the franchise's all-time leading defenseman scorer.

“What we've been doing the last three years is adding assets,” Verbeek said. “I looked at giving this group another extra push and helping us make this push to where we want to go. And so ultimately if we get into the playoffs and we can have a nice run, it's worth it. It's worth it to give this group experience, give them a chance to make the playoffs and to do well in the playoffs.

Read more:Artemi Panarin scores his first goal with Kings in victory over Islanders

“I think we have enough draft picks. We have enough prospects coming. Is it worth it to give up a conditional first-rounder? Yes it is to get the quality of player [like] John Carlson, it made sense.”

The move could prove to be a gamble, though, since Carlson, in the final year of his contract, may be nothing more than a short-term rental. Verbeek said he didn’t start talking to Washington about a deal until this week but the negotiations progressed quickly. Carlson said he was asleep when he was traded but a cousin heard about it and called to tell him he was headed to Anaheim.

“The middle of the night is not the best way to find out some very altering news like that,” said Carlson, who is expected to join the team Saturday. “It’s been a crazy day packing, getting ready, saying good-byes. It’s getting more and more exciting.”

In addition to adding Carlson, the Ducks also sent center Ryan Strome to Calgary. Strome, 32, had three goals and six assists in 33 games with the Ducks this season. The Ducks will get a seventh-round pick in 2027 in return.

The Kings didn't make any moves to substantially improve their roster. Although they signed forward Mathieu Joseph, a Stanley Cup winner with the Tampa Bay Lightning, and acquired center Scott Laughton from the Toronto Maple Leafs, they also unloaded forwards Corey Perry and Warren Foegele in exchange for draft picks.

Joseph, 29, comes to L.A. after recording two goals and 11 points in 39 games with the St. Louis Blues before agreeing to have his contract terminated Thursday. He had been assigned to Springfield of the AHL, where he appeared in two games.

Laughton, 31, had eight goals and four assists for Toronto and joins the Kings as a depth piece following the losses of Perry and Foegele. In return, the Maple Leafs will get a third-round pick, which will become a second-round pick if the Kings make the playoffs.

For the Kings, the trade deadline came down to asset management: The contracts of Joseph and Laughton expire at the end of the season while the Foegele deal clears $3.5 million from the payroll next season. The team also protected its young talent while adding two draft picks.

Perry, 40, the former Ducks winger who signed with the Kings as a free agent last summer, went to Tampa Bay on Friday in exchange for a second-round pick in the 2028 draft while Foegele, 29, the third King to request a trade this season, was shipped to Ottawa on Thursday for a second-round pick in this summer’s draft and a conditional swap of third-round picks.

Read more:Ryan Poehling agrees to four-year contract extension with Ducks

The Kings (25-22-14), who lost to Edmonton in the first round of the playoffs in each of the last four seasons, started Friday sixth in the eight-team Pacific Division but just three points behind Seattle for a wild-card berth.

General manager Ken Holland made a splash just ahead of the 18-day Olympic break by acquiring forward Artemi Panarin from the New York Rangers and signing him to a two-year $22-million extension. But then the team lost Kevin Fiala for the rest of the season to a fractured leg in the Olympic tournament and saw winger Andrei Kuzmenko undergo surgery last week to repair torn meniscus in his right knee, hampering an offense that ranks 28th in the 32-team league in goals.

Holland followed those two events by firing coach Jim Hiller last Sunday and replacing him on an interim basis with assistant D.J. Smith. The Kings have gone through five coaches and three general managers since the end of the 2016-17 season and haven’t won a postseason series since 2014, the last time they won the Stanley Cup.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

The Philadelphia Flyers have spent the past several seasons methodically reshaping their roster, trying to build a sustainable core rather than chasing quick fixes. That long-term approach often requires difficult decisions—especially when the player involved is someone the organization helped develop from the ground up.

The trade sending Bobby Brink to the Minnesota Wild in exchange for defenseman David Jiricek represents exactly that kind of decision. It was not a move rooted in dissatisfaction with Brink but in the reality of roster construction. For the Flyers, the deal reflects the intersection of two organizational priorities: managing a growing surplus of wingers and investing in young defensemen with high ceilings.

The Difficult Part: Parting With a Homegrown Player

From the Flyers'—and specifically Danny Briere's—perspective, this was not a transaction made lightly. Brink’s development has been closely watched within the organization, and his growth over the past two seasons made him an increasingly reliable contributor.

Briere made that clear when discussing the move.

“It was not an easy [decision]," he said on Friday. "I was part of the development staff when Bobby came along. We had some long discussions about his future and his career, so to have been a part of that and then to see him blossom into the play he has become—there’s, selfishly, a lot of pride in that.”

Danny Briere said that the decision to trade Bobby Brink was “not an easy one” and said he “selfishly” had a lot of pride in Brink’s development since he was part of the development staff that helped Brink blossom. Ultimately it came down to managing the Flyers winger logjam.

— Siobhan Nolan (@SGNolan) March 6, 2026

Brink’s progression had been evident on the ice. After entering the NHL with questions about how his size and skating would translate, he worked to carve out a role through intelligence, puck movement, and creativity.

His playmaking instincts became particularly effective on a line with Noah Cates and Tyson Foerster, where Brink’s vision complemented Cates’ two-way reliability and Foerster’s shooting ability.

That trio often functioned as one of the Flyers’ most analytically sound lines, capable of maintaining offensive-zone pressure and creating scoring chances through controlled puck movement rather than pure speed.

In short, Brink had proven he belonged on an NHL roster.

The Roster Reality: A Crowded Wing

The challenge for the Flyers was not Brink’s performance, but the organizational depth chart for Brink's position. 

Philadelphia has steadily accumulated a significant number of wingers, both on the current roster and in the prospect pipeline. According to Briere, the organization felt the need to start managing the logjam. 

“When you look at the way our team is coming along and you look at the depth we’re building on the wing—Konecny, Michkov, Tippett, Zegras, and then you have Tyson [Foerster], who’s going to come back next season," he said. "You have Martone that’s getting close, you have Barkey who surprised us this year with how well he’s played, you have Alex Bump and other young guys that are also pushing.”

At some point, depth becomes redundancy, and teams rarely have the luxury of holding excess talent at a single position while other areas of the roster require reinforcement.

For the Flyers, the imbalance was becoming clear. The wing position featured a growing list of established players and extremely promising prospects, while the organization continued searching for long-term solutions on the blue line.

Those circumstances forced a difficult question: which winger could be moved to address another need without disrupting the core of the forward group?

Brink, despite his clear development, ultimately became the logical candidate.

Why David Jiricek Fits the Flyers’ Vision

In acquiring Jiricek, the Flyers are taking a calculated swing. 

The 22-year-old defenseman has long been viewed as a player with considerable upside—size, strength, and the kind of physical profile teams covet on the blue line. Philadelphia had previously shown interest in Jiricek but believed he was unlikely to become available.

Briere said that the Flyers had previously been interested in David Jiricek when he first got traded to Minnesota but didn’t think he’d be available, so the interest is not out of the blue. Said they’re going to dedicate a lot of effort to help Jiricek grow his game here.

— Siobhan Nolan (@SGNolan) March 6, 2026

When the opportunity emerged, the Flyers recognized the potential value.

“When that came in yesterday, we started thinking about the chance to add a big, young, strong defenseman like [Jiricek], we felt that was a good opportunity for us to look towards the future," Briere said. "We felt it was a good swing to take on a promising young defenseman.”

With his size (6-foot-4, 204 lbs.) and right-hand shot, Jiricek is not dissimilar to current Flyers defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen, but Briere made it clear that they're in no rush to get him into the NHL lineup, choosing instead to work with him to develop his game and ensure he's fully prepared to take that step into becoming a regular NHL defenseman. 

"I can't say David or Oliver Bonk are ready today," Briere admitted. "To come in, especially in the top four position—it's one thing to come in a play in a bottom pairing at the start, but they haven't even done that yet. I think they need a little bit more time and we need to protect them a little bit. 

"[Ristolainen] is playing on that top pairing with Sanheim right now. I don't think it would be fair to ask David or Oliver to play those minutes yet. We hope that at one point it comes to that, but I don't think they're ready for that role yet... We hope they get there, but we want to protect them as well along the way."

A Trade That Reflects Organizational Strategy

Viewed in isolation, trading a young forward who has shown steady improvement might seem counterintuitive to what the Flyers are building. But roster construction rarely exists in isolation.

The Flyers’ decision ultimately reflects a broader strategy. With such a crowded group of talented wingers, opportunities for ice time were likely to become increasingly limited, which ultimately doesn't benefit anyone. 

Meanwhile, acquiring a young defenseman with upside addresses an area where the organization still seeks long-term answers.

So, in that context, the Brink-for-Jiricek trade becomes less about losing a productive player and more about reallocating assets in pursuit of balance.

Brink leaves Philadelphia as a player who successfully proved his NHL ability and contributed meaningfully to the Flyers’ progress. Jiricek arrives as a project with potential—a player the Flyers believe could grow into an important piece of their future.

(And the Flyers won't have to wait long to see Brink again, as they travel to Minnesota for a game on March 12.)

In what looked to be a pretty quiet deadline day for the Avs, as they had already gotten most of their business taken care of in the weeks and days leading up to the deadline, they managed to get a deal into the queue before the official cutoff to bring home a very familiar face and one of the biggest names on the trade market for this deadline: Nazem Kadri.

This is the big trade that Avs fans have been talking about wanting to happen leading up to the deadline, and Colorado actually managed to pull it off. Kadri is and has been a fan-favorite player for years and years now, and of course, was a massive part of the 2022 Stanley Cup-winning team. Calgary did retain 20% of Kadri’s AAV for the remainder of his contract in this deal as well, which brings his contract down to $5.6M through the 2028-29 season. This means that the Avs were actually able to make the money work, especially with big financial commitments looming, such as Cale Makar’s extension.

In the biggest deal of the day and perhaps of the entire trade deadline period, thr Avalanche give up a conditional 2028 first round pick, a conditional 2027 second round pick, depth forward Victor Olofsson and unsigned prospect Max Curran. We previously discussed how with Curran electing to go to college as a 2024 draftee his rights likely wouldn’t not extend and is a good candidate as a trade chip. The Avalanche will have to address the opportunity cost of dwindled assets at next years trade deadline but this is a fair price to pay and even hints at Calgary doing Kadri a favor with this deal.

The 35-year old center is having a slight down year, with 12 goals and 29 assists in 61 games for the Flames so far. That said, Kadri will undoubtedly have a better supporting cast in Colorado compared to Calgary and should be more than fine playing and producing on this team.

Ultimately, I don’t know how you feel anything other than great about this move. As I said, Kadri has been a fan-favorite player for years and years now, and people have wanted him to come back to Colorado since he signed in Calgary in the 2022 offseason. Now, he’s back and gets another chance to chase another Stanley Cup. I think I speak for a lot of Avs fans when I say I’m so excited for him to be back, and I’m extremely excited to watch this team after the deadline for the remainder of the regular season and the playoffs. It’s going to be a ton of fun.