from Damien Cox of Sportsnet,

Seller. Buyer. Conventional terms we hear year after year at the NHL trade deadline. This team’s a buyer, this team’s a seller. This other team’s deciding whether it wants to be a buyer or a seller.

Good teams, teams heading to the playoffs and true contenders, are buyers. To be called a seller is to be in a bad position, to have failed to ice a competitive team and thus put in the position of having to dump veteran players under contract for futures.

The problem is, those terms don’t really apply anymore. Not in a cap world. Not in an environment where things like cap space, the number of contracts, entry-level deals and years until unrestricted free agency matter just as much as how many goals an established NHLer can score.

In 2018, all 31 teams are buyers. It’s just a question of what they’re buying.

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