Thursday FTB: Penultimate Trade Deadline Day

The Tampa Bay Lightning made their big move of the deadline, re-acquiring Yanni Gourde from the Seattle Kraken, but he's not Tampa Bay's big get as they also acquired Oliver Bjorkstrand in the same move. All it cost them were two first round picks, a second round pick, some assorted parts, and a fourth round pick to Detroit for retention on Gourde to make the money work. A good piece of work for the team that's literally going back to play all the hits. I half expect them to get Stamkos back from Nashville.

The Pittsburgh Penguins did a bit of business as well, sending defender Vincent Desharnais to San Jose for a fifth round pick. Desharnais was acquired midseason from Vancouver and has another year on his contract at $2 million. The Penguins then made a bigger move, trading Michael Bunting and a fourth round pick to Nashville for Luke Schenn and Thomas Novak. Bunting and Schenn have one more year on their deals, Novak (a centre) has two. Bunting's cap hit of $4.5 million is about as much as the two players combined. This move looks like it was made for next season not this one from two teams who want a re-do from this one. But who knows, maybe Pittsburgh flips Schenn, and maybe Nashville flips Bunting. Novak looks like the rare centre piece Dubas wanted, though.

The last trade of the day (before 10:30pm when I wrote this before bed) was Florida acquiring a backup goalie after trading Spencer Knight for Seth Jones. They got Vitek Vanecek from San Jose for an AHLer. Florida took on his whole $3.4 million contract which is why they got him for essentially nothing.

It was a busy day on the waiver wire in order to get roster spots opened before the deadline. I'm interested in the defender no one's talking about – Jordan Oesterle. He's got a year left, he's big, he's at league min for another year, he's had good defensive numbers in the past, but he's been on the outside in Boston. He seems like a good candidate for cheap depth at 6/7D.