Trade Deadline brings unique challenges for coaches to navigate

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2024-25 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.

In this edition, Don Granato writes about the NHL Trade Deadline, which comes at 3 p.m. ET on Friday. He has experienced the Trade Deadline from different perspectives, as a coach/general manager in the United States Hockey League and ECHL; as a coach in the American Hockey League; and as a pro scout, assistant and coach in the NHL.

Making moves at the Trade Deadline is different than making moves in the summer. In the offseason there's no context. Each team has a bunch of players on paper. Sure, they have reputations, but they haven't gone head-to-head against the other teams yet. When you approach the Deadline, however, you have more than half a season of context.

"We definitely need a penalty killer." "We definitely need a complement to our second-line center." "We definitely need a second-pairing 'D' or secondary scoring." Definitively in the context of your competitors you know what your needs are.

My first six years of coaching, I was fortunate to also serve as the team's GM. When I was the coach/GM with Peoria of the ECHL in 1999-2000, we made a move at the Deadline that helped us win the Kelly Cup. My player/assistant, Jason Christie, now a pro scout with the Edmonton Oilers, was key in this. We said, "OK, we need more skill on the power play, and we need an experienced guy, somebody with a presence." We targeted Aaron Boh, a veteran defenseman from Arkansas. He was the Dennis Rodman of the ECHL. He had tattoos, earrings and colorful hair. He was a DJ by night. And he was an awesome person and a heck of a talent.

When we made the trade, a friend called me and said, "What are you doing? You've got a good thing going in Peoria. This guy could negatively affect your team." And I said, "I believe our team identity is strong enough at this point that he's going to complement our room and be a good fit." I wouldn't have brought him in in training camp, however. We hadn't had an identity yet at that point. When your team has an identity, you can go after things more aggressively and with more confidence. You can take a bit more risk. Boh had 17 points (five goals, 12 assists) in 15 regular-season games and 11 points (two goals, nine assists) in 15 playoff games. I had to scratch him once in the playoffs, but we won the championship, and he was a dream to coach.

When I was the coach of Worcester of the AHL from 2000-05, we had a really good parent club in the St. Louis Blues. Larry Pleau, the GM, would call and say, "Donny, sorry, but we've got to send this young guy to this team or that team." If your team is a contender, you're probably giving up prospects to get that 30-year-old guy up top.

When I was a pro scout with the Vancouver Canucks in 2010-11, we had little salary cap space. Mike Gillis, the GM, gave a mandate to find two players who could help us under a certain price. We ended up getting Chris Higgins from the Florida Panthers and Maxim Lapierre from the Anaheim Ducks with almost no room to spare, and they helped us go to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. It was an unbelievable job by Mike Gillis and Eric Crawford, who was the director of pro scouting at the time and holds the same position with the Montreal Canadiens now.

In the NHL, it's a lot of work for all the coaches toward the Trade Deadline -- and nerve-wracking. The general manager will talk to you during the day, but then he's in his office the rest of the day or on the phone with his staff, talking about different scenarios.

Trades come with pressure, especially big trades like the ones we've seen lately. An intangible that every management team searches for behind the scenes is familiarity. Does anyone on our staff have personal familiarity with the potential player? Can we find out about this player's personality? His mindset? Commitment level? Assessing talent is the easy part, but a ton of work goes on behind the scenes to collect as much information as possible on the intangibles of the player. What's his competitive level? What's his mindset? How is he as a teammate? How will he respond to our team's style of play? Will he accept the role we may see him in?

When there's some familiarity, deals have a much higher chance of getting done, and familiarity can even elevate your willingness to pay a higher premium. If through familiarity you know what you are getting, then naturally the inclination is to pursue it harder. An example may be when the Panthers acquired defenseman Seth Jones from the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday. Panthers GM Bill Zito knew Jones because they had been in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization together. Zito can inform his coaching staff in detail how this player is going to fit within the context of their needs and how they operate as an organization. The player will have a chance to get up to speed faster in a scenario like this as well, having a prior relationship with the GM that just acquired him.

Contrast that to the unknowns when you acquire a player you're not familiar with. In this situation, a lot concerns you as an NHL coach. Any time a new player comes in, unless you've coached that player and had a personal relationship with that player, there's a lot to figure out. There's a lot to learn about him, and really quickly. How will this player fit into the locker room? Will he find chemistry with his new teammates? And how long will it take? How will he respond to the slot and role designated to him? Is it different than what he had prior? Where is the psyche at this point of his career, in light of the trade itself? I can tell you that none of these are much of a concern when you acquire a familiar player, yet all of these and more are a concern when you don't.

The quest to answer some of the questions can start behind the scenes before the trade, where there's a lot of phone calls going on, working to find someone you trust that has a greater familiarity. There's a lot of due diligence when you haven't had a track record with the player. You're usually trying to find somebody in your organization that's been with that player or knows somebody really close to that player. And you're trying to do that stuff discreetly. Obviously you don't want trade rumors to get out. Even once the trade is made, you're calling to find out. You could even call the coach from the team you made the trade with.

It's a relief when it's over. Guys are on pins and needles, whether they talk about it or not. Everybody's in waiting. You have that two- or three-week window when the rumors start picking up. I think players feel, "What is our team going to be?" And then once the Deadline happens at 3 p.m., it's like everybody can exhale and move on very quickly. You walk in that locker room the next time as a team, and you're back to, "OK, this is our team. Let's go after it again."