5 2023 Offseason Trade Ideas for Some of the NHL's Worst Teams

The exciting part of being a team at or near the bottom of the NHL standings this season is the hope you'll be able to win the draft lottery and select Connor Bedard No. 1 in June. But only one team will get to do that, and everyone else will have to find other ways to get better.

To improve a team with a lot of holes, you can hope some of your prospects are ready to make the leap or you seek help in free agency. But the most effective, and most nerve-wracking, way to improve a team is by making trades.

Trades are fun and exciting for us, and for general managers they're the best and most terrifying thing they can do. But what's the harm in making deals when your team spent the season in the basement? Things can't get worse, right?

Wait, no, they can absolutely get worse. But when you're down bad and the future looks bleak, change can make it feel better. And that's why we're going to make deals that could improve life down the road for some of the NHL's worst teams.

The Anaheim Ducks have had a miserable season. They don't score a lot of goals and they've allowed a lot of them. It would seem like that's goalie John Gibson's fault more than anything else, but Gibson's had to stand on his head to even make it look this good.

The Ducks need help all over the ice at forward and on defense, and oddly enough they have depth in goal. Anthony Stolarz has backed up Gibson the past couple of seasons, and youngster Lukas Dostal has shown some potential in limited action this season. Sure, you could trade Dostal because he's younger and has the potential that teams get excited about, but Gibson has a solid track record as well as a strong reputation.

Gibson has four years left on his contract at a juicy $6.4 million cap hit. It's not an easy contract to move, but if you're the Ducks, you want to get goal scoring in return. They've scored 175 goals this season, third-fewest in the league. Trevor Zegras has 21 goals and Troy Terry and Adam Henrique are tied for second on the team with 19 goals each. It's dire and a team in need of addressing goaltending in a big way (Buffalo? Montréal? Columbus?) can offer up young offensively capable players in return for him.

Gibson's cap hit and injury history make moving him tricky, but a savvy team should kick the tires and see what it might take.

There was no hotter name at the trade deadline this year than that of San Jose defenseman Erik Karlsson.

Talk swirled about the Edmonton Oilers and even Ottawa Senators having interest in acquiring the Norris Trophy favorite, and for good reason. Karlsson, 32, tapped into the fountain of youth this season and has piled up goals and assists the way he did during his elite seasons with the Senators. He leads all defensemen in scoring this season and has been brilliant all-around.

Karlsson is not an easy player to trade for a few reasons. First off, look how good he is! San Jose is looking to get back to respectability sooner than later, and they've still got Tomas Hertl and Logan Couture playing well and have added 2021 seventh overall pick William Eklund to the mix late this season to show the future has hope. Having Karlsson there to help lead their attack would be a great idea, especially when he's playing this well.

Then there's his contract. Karlsson has four more years left with an $11.5 million cap hit. Trying to trade him almost certainly means bringing a third team into the mix to help spread around his girthy cap hit. Even teams like Buffalo or Arizona, each of whom is hovering just above the salary floor, would require sweeteners to take the full deal, and at that point the deal wouldn't be worth doing from San Jose's end.

That said, there seemed to be too many moving parts to deal Karlsson at the deadline. During the offseason, though? Different story. Not to mention it would allow for a more open market of potential buyers. Trading Karlsson would allow San Jose to add younger players to the mix as part of their rebuild. It's exactly the kind of deal they should be looking for to get out of the briny depths of last place.

Stop us if you've heard this before: The Vancouver Canucks are in a bit of a weird spot these days.

After the Canucks fired Bruce Boudreau and brought in Rick Tocchet to coach, they've made a bit of a turnaround in the standings. They went from hovering around the very bottom of the league to suddenly being within shouting distance of the wild card in the Western Conference. That said, the team has a lot of flaws just the same and not a lot of good ways to address them and make changes.

Players they'd want to trade aren't overly attractive to other teams, and those who would be are ones the Canucks wouldn't be so eager to give up. It's a classic no-man's land for transactions. After all, Vancouver wouldn't want to move Elias Pettersson or Quinn Hughes, and wanting a lot for players like Tyler Myers or Conor Garland won't get it done.

That's what makes forward Brock Boeser an ideal candidate to be traded. The two years left on his contract with a $6.65 million cap hit are palatable for teams to take on, particularly when it means giving up players or picks to make it happen. Boeser is a solid scorer and by all accounts a really good person in the room. He'd be an ideal middle-six forward for any team, particularly on one with scoring depth to help spread around the puck. Even though his goals are down this season (12 in 59 games compared to 23 in 71 games and 56 games respectively in the past two seasons), the points are still coming via assists (33).

Boeser would give the Canucks the best chance to improve their team, especially since they wouldn't be dealing him while he's at a low point. Whether it's teams like Minnesota, Carolina or even Pittsburgh, he'd be a great fit anywhere.

If ever there was a player who seems like they could really use a change of scenery, it's St. Louis Blues goalie Jordan Binnington. The fiery, if not reckless, netminder has struggled the past couple of seasons with the Blues, and this season has been an adventure that hasn't always been very fun for him or the team.

While Binnington has struggled to keep pucks out of the net, he's also recently struggled to keep his cool out on the ice as well. There's a fine line between using an edge to motivate yourself and your teammates and another thing entirely to simply make everyone love Marc-André Fleury even more.

In the past two seasons, Binnington has been below the league average in save percentage, and he's been downright brutal this season with an .892 mark. Considering league average is .905, it's no wonder the Blues fell out of the playoff discussion earlier this season.

St. Louis has prospect Joel Hofer on a .920 save percentage in the AHL, third-best in the league. The problem for the Blues is Binnington has done so poorly of late that they would struggle to find teams interested in acquiring him. That he's got four more years left on his contract with a $6 million cap hit makes it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.

Binnington does have a Stanley Cup title in his back pocket, however, and he was instrumental in helping the Blues win it all in 2019. That kind of track record could be enough to win over a GM seeking an answer to their problems between the pipes, in addition to the Blues eating some of the contract, too.

We're picking the Canadiens to pursue Nashville Predators goalie Juuse Saros this summer, but the truth is they're one of roughly four or five teams that should be ringing Barry Trotz's phone off the hook.

There's no real reason for the Predators to trade Saros, but they have 2020 first-round pick Yaroslav Askarov playing well in the AHL, and teams generally don't draft a goalie in the first round only to let them hang out in development for years and years.

Montréal knows that all too well (Carey Price), and it also means they should have a good idea when a team will be ready to give that player the opportunity to take over in the NHL. Saros has been brilliant for Nashville for a few years, and he's got the Predators back into contention for the playoffs this season. But the Habs, who struggled all season long in goal, have the picks and prospect assets to make Nashville an offer they'd have to consider strongly with Askarov ready in waiting.

The Canadiens already have Nick Suzuki, Cole Caufield, Jordan Harris, Kaiden Guhle and Kirby Dach crushing it in their young age, and they're poised to make a run up the standings in the coming years. The one area they don't have a burgeoning prospect is in goal, though. Making a play for Saros would help them not only climb out of the basement in the East but also throw them right into the mix with Ottawa, Detroit and Buffalo as rebuilding teams ready to compete for the postseason.

Not coincidentally, it's Ottawa, Buffalo and Los Angeles who should call on Saros as well to help their own future chances of success. Such a move would cost a lot, but it could help the Canadiens take a huge leap forward.