from Travis Yost of TSN,

Come every trade deadline, there’s one critical question a general manager looking to buy needs to be able to answer: Where is the drag on my team, and can that drag be remedied by external player acquisition?

From the top of the organizational hierarchy all the way through the assistant coaches, most of a team’s hockey minds can provide reasonable qualitative assessments in an attempt to answer that question. Add this to the basic numbers that have been available essentially forever, and you now have a good chunk of your justification for trade proposals in years past.

Much more thought that goes into this process in today’s NHL - and that’s a good thing. Hockey analytics have played a role, identifying team strengths/weaknesses, and generally amplifying trade justifications. It’s the classic case of how having more information can lead to more informed decisions, assuming the right personnel are handling the operations.

One of the things I like to look at in the buildup to trade deadline is the effectivity of player combinations over the course of a season. At the absolute minimum, it should give you a reasonable starting point for assessing both drivers of success and performance drags across a roster.

continued