Welcome back, Upper East Siders. I took a couple of months off from hockey (well, ish — I was certainly more disconnected than I am during the winter), which included my podcast and newsletter, just to give myself a bit of a reset, and man, was it needed.

Anyways, just as I was gearing up to get WST Sunday Live back on schedule and all of my gameday fits lined up for the season, the greatest player to ever suit up for a hockey team in my city publicly confirmed his trade request. We’re so back.

Coupled with rumours surrounding Dylan Larkin earlier this summer, the souring of Connor Hellebuyck’s relationship with the Winnipeg Jets has sparked some interesting conversation around trade protection, bargaining, and player empowerment. So what better time, and what better conversation, to dive right back into hockey?

I love watching fans of other leagues show up in hockey and lose their minds over certain norms in our league that we’ve become accustomed to.

I decided to do some research a while ago when I saw NBA fans talking about how rare NTCs are, and I was absolutely flabbergasted to discover that there are fewer than a dozen guys in NBA history who have had this stipulation in their contracts. 10 guys. TEN GUYS!

For reference, in the 2025-26 NHL season, the Columbus Blue Jackets have 12.

We’re all aware that in the NHL, this type of protection can look incredibly different from player to player. Even the terms NMC (no-movement clause) and NTC (no-trade clause) mean different things, and whenever you see them brought up, they tend to be accompanied by the term “modified”.

So why is it that they’re handed out like candy in the NHL?

I know not everyone loves charts in hockey, so let me break this down for ya real quick: blue go up lots, red go up less.

In the last 15 years, the NHL has experienced relatively flat cap growth, which means it’s harder for teams to give their players significant pay raises.

In the mundane world, when you start a new job that has an inflexible salary grid, what do you do? You negotiate other stuff. Vacation days. Perks and benefits. Other things that can be worked into your contract that change your total compensation.

NHL players are labourers like the rest of us, and when they sign their employment contracts, they understand that they’re signing up for certain things that may be undesirable to them, but they’re willing to do so in order to take this job. One of the big disadvantages they have that most of us don’t is that their employer can relocate them to 31 other cities at the drop of a hat.

And so, if NHL GMs are struggling to give players the multi-million dollar pay raises they may be asking for, what can they offer instead? Perhaps the ability to change those 31 potential destinations to 10. Perhaps the security of knowing that your family will be able to hand-select the next destination you want to go.

That doesn’t seem like a bad compromise if you can’t give me the extra few milly I’m looking for.

So this is where a lot of the discourse has come in. People understand the incentive, but how does its emergence into the mainstream impact the landscape of the NHL?

There are a lot of strong opinions out there about what trade protection is doing to the NHL. Free trade is part of what keeps the NHL competitive and allows for teams to restock, rebuild, and remain competitive as resources allow. Trade only happens if assets are movable, and players are the most important assets in hockey.

So what happens when you can’t move them?

The salary cap has gone up, so trade protection becoming commonplace reminds me a bit of trying to put toothpaste back into its tube. Pay raises will be easier to come by, but it’s going to be really hard to stop handing out clauses once you’ve already started. So guys are about to start getting both. The NHL loves to set a precedent and follow it, and let’s face it — when Trent Frederic gets an NMC, every player who has ever put up a 20-goal season is getting on the phone with their agent and making some demands.

In any economy, new entrants will show up and the market will adjust. That’s what’s happening right now in the NHL, but we won’t quite know the impacts until we’re further into this new norm.

I’ve seen every take under the sun on Reddit and Twitter about this.

When NMCs and NTCs first entered the picture, they were intended to protect players from getting moved against their will. So what happens when their will is to move? It puts a team between a rock and a hard place.

So I guess the question here is, well, what do players owe their teams? Do they owe them anything? How would a supermarket be able to keep its business running if the ripest apples refused to stay in the store, but also refused to be purchased by any customer who walks into the store (other than a select few, who may not even want apples to begin with)? Is it insensitive to compare human beings to produce?

As always, there’s no burning hot take in this newsletter, and honestly, this time around, there’s no structure to it either. But the Connor Hellebuyck/Winnipeg and Dylan Larkin/Detroit conversations have been fascinating, and as of the moment I’m writing this, it doesn’t look like any immediate resolutions will be bestowed upon us anytime soon.

Some of you may not know this, but the “reply” function works fabulously, so I’d love for you to treat it like an Athletic comment section and share all your nuanced, insightful thoughts on the matter. Tone is hard to convey in written text at times, so please know that wasn’t sarcastic — I spend hours reading Athletic comment sections after reading an article. You get all of the cool insight of Twitter replies without the OnlyFans bots and red pills.

Thanks for reading, and see you in October!