The 5 NHL Players Likely to be Traded After the Elias Lindholm and Sean Monahan Deals

The NHL's regular season is on a brief hiatus to allow for annual All-Star Game festivities, which, this time around, are being hosted in the hockey-mad city of Toronto.

But if you think that means all the action has stalled...think again.

The major transactions wire has been buzzing with activity over the past couple days, with Calgary sending two-way forward Elias Lindholm to the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday and the Montreal Canadiens getting into the act on Friday when rugged center Sean Monahan was shipped to the Winnipeg Jets.

The Flames got three players and two draft picks, including a first-rounder this summer, in exchange for Lindholm, whose six-year, $29.1 million deal runs out at the end of this season. Meanwhile, Monahan, who signed a one-year, $2 million contract with the Canadiens last June, also brought a first-round selection and another conditional pick in return.

The flurry of moves sent the B/R hockey team scurrying to consider who might be next to change addresses, considering standings and contracts, among other factors. We whittled the list to five who are presented here. Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought of your own in the comments section.

It's a pretty good time to be Jake Guentzel.

The 29-year-old is a native of the non-traditional hockey city of Omaha, Nebraska, and wasn't necessarily on a prospect path when he was plucked in the third round of the 2013 draft.

But here he is these days, in the walk year of a $30 million contract whose bottom line is likely to more than double by the time the 2024-25 season begins.

Exactly where he'll spend the waning days of the existing deal remains to be seen.

Guentzel has been a good, productive soldier alongside Sidney Crosby with the Penguins, reaching 40 goals twice, 36 in another season, and establishing a pace through 46 games this season that would have him in or at least near the 40 neighborhood once again.

To suggest he could command over $10 million annually going forward is no stretch. But guaranteeing the Pittsburgh brass is going to make that happen is a big one.

GM Kyle Dubas would surely like to keep the playoff window open with him as a talented wedge, but if Guentzel is unlikely to accept a team-friendly deal (and let's face it, he probably won't), it's mandatory Dubas makes a move to acquire a future-focused package.

Will the last one out of the Scotiabank Saddledome please turn off the lights?

OK, it's not quite that bad in Calgary these days.

But it's got to feel like it now that Lindholm is gone to Vancouver not too long after Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk left for Columbus and Florida, and probably not long before at least or two more pending free agents unlikely to re-sign are dealt for picks and prospects.

That makes Noah Hanifin the next player up for bids.

The 27-year-old defenseman is in the final year of a six-year contract paying $4.95 million annually and suggested last summer that he had no interest in staying in Calgary for another deal, which means anything short of a trade would be a significant surprise.

He could command more than $7 million per season going forward after five-plus seasons with the Flames in which he's averaged better than 20 minutes and been an overall plus-43 player across 408 games.

The fact that he's a Boston native and a Boston College product surely brings a deal with the Bruins into play, given also that GM Don Sweeney had expressed interest in drafting him before he was taken fifth overall by the Carolina Hurricanes in 2015.

Let's go ahead and say it gets done this time.

Gaudreau, Tkachuk, Lindholm, maybe Hanifin...and now Chris Tanev.

The 34-year-old is in his 14th season after arriving as an undrafted free agent to the Vancouver Canucks in 2010. He was an NHL regular within three years and made the jump from British Columbia to Alberta in 2020, signing the four-year, $18 million contract that'll expire at the close of the league season early this summer.

But given the realities in Calgary and the needs of teams elsewhere in the league, there's an excellent chance he be elsewhere come springtime.

The 6'2", 193-pound defenseman is hardly a scorer in the Quinn Hughes or Cale Makar modes, but his underlying goal-share stats are very good and he averages nearly 20 minutes a game while playing against typically high-level competition.

That's certainly not lost on executives around the league, particularly one Brad Treliving, who was the GM at the time the Flames acquired his services.

It just so happens that Treliving holds the same position these days with the Toronto Maple Leafs, a Cup-starving team whose per-game totals of shots (30.5) and goals (3.17) allowed are on the wrong side of the NHL midpoint.

"Doesn't Chris Tanev have to make a decision? Is he chasing the Stanley Cup this year?," TSN's Darren Dreger said. "And if the answer to that is yes, then that's going to factor significantly into his destination of choice."

Maybe this is the year it works out for Adam Henrique.

The native of Brantford, Ontario, was a third-round pick of the New Jersey Devils back in 2008 and went to a Stanley Cup Final as a rookie in 2011-12, but he's played just four playoff games across 11 seasons since while spending time with both the Devils and the Ducks, to whom he was dealt early in the 2017-18 season.

He's 33 years old now and has 33 points in 49 games for an Anaheim team that reached this season's All-Star break at No. 30 overall in the 32-team league. He's in the final season of a five-year deal he signed with the Ducks in 2018 and could be attractive to suitors as a third-line center or winger thanks to his hockey IQ and knack for getting to the hard areas.

A 53.4 percent win rate on face-offs doesn't hurt either, and when you pair it with two short-handed goals and four short-handed points, Henrique starts seeming a lot like the sort of "glue guy" acquisition that teams look back on each year as vital to their deep Cup run.

If this one feels a little familiar, it should.

Vladimir Tarasenko was a particularly coveted trade piece around this time last year, when he was finishing what wound up as a 644-game run across parts of 11 seasons in St. Louis.

The Blues got two picks and two players in a deal made last February with the New York Rangers, with whom the now-32-year-old winger had 21 points in 31 games to close the regular season and four more in a surprisingly brief seven-game playoff stay.

He was on the move again come summertime when he spurned other suitors to sign a one-year, $5 million pact with Ottawa, but now that the Senators have fallen 16 points off the Eastern Conference playoff pace, it seems likely the six-time 30-goal scorer and his current stat line of 13 goals and 33 points in 45 games will be packing another travel bag.

Given his past production and a resume that includes the line "Stanley Cup winner," there likely won't be a shortage of teams willing to take a rental chance (or more) with the hope that he can catch fire when the big games commence in April.

There's a particular need for offense in Carolina, which actually made a run at Tarasenko as a free agent before he chose Ottawa and has just one player (Sebastian Aho) scoring at a point-per-game rate.