For the New York Islanders and Utah Mammoth, becoming 2026 trade deadline winners was rooted — at least partially — in decisions made one year ago ahead of the 2025 NHL swap shutoff.

As we approached this year’s 3 p.m. ET / noon PT deadline on Friday, the Islanders struck out and acquired Brayden Schenn from the St. Louis Blues. This has been a surprisingly strong season on Long Island in the first year under GM Mathieu Darche’s stewardship and the spell of rookie Matthew Schaefer’s incredible play.

Now Schenn arrives to provide some more playoff experience to a club that already acquired Ondrej Palat — like Schenn, a Cup winner — from the New Jersey Devils before the Olympic break.

One of the pieces used to acquire Schenn was the first-round pick the Isles got last year when they moved franchise mainstay Brock Nelson to the Colorado Avalanche. New York was actually only four points out of a playoff spot when it made that deal — executed by former GM Lou Lamoriello — one day ahead of the 2025 deadline, but the hard decision to move on from Nelson was the right one given it netted that pick and prospect Calum Ritchie.

Now, with his team’s own first-rounder still in hand, Darche felt comfortable putting that extra pick in play to help this year’s edition of the squad become a team that could not only make the playoffs, but perhaps win a first-round series. Let’s face it, dealing away a first-rounder is always more palatable when it wasn’t yours to begin with, especially if the team it comes from — in this case, the league-leading Avs — could make it the 31^st overall pick by advancing to the Final or the 32^nd selection by winning the Cup. 

As for Utah, the Mammoth swung a huge swap for defenceman MacKenzie Weegar on Wednesday for, among other things, three second-round picks. (This is a good time to note that every year, for the purpose of our winners and losers piece, we consider not only what happened on deadline day itself, but the trade deadline season that’s essentially a six-week run-up to the actual final day of dealing.)

The pieces for that swap were the result of asset-building when the Mammoth were still the Arizona Coyotes. That said, Utah GM Bill Armstrong also drew an important line in the sand last year when he signed pending-UFA Karel Vejmelka to an extension two days before the deadline. 

Like the Islanders, Utah was right on the edge of a playoff spot — closer, even, at three points out — but instead of gathering yet more future assets by flipping Vejmelka — who could have returned something tasty in an always-thin goalie market — Armstrong arrived at a pressure point and opted to keep a valuable player. 

Now, Weegar — one of the best players to move in the 2026 deadline season — arrives on a Utah squad that could secure home-ice advantage thanks in large part to Vejmelka’s league-best 29 wins. 

The Mammoth and Islanders must be happy with where their teams sit today relative to 12 months ago. With that in mind, here are some other winners — and a few losers — from trade deadline season, 2026.

They made us wait for it, but the long-rumoured reunion with Nazem Kadri finally happened and Colorado ultimately convinced the Flames to retain some of the player’s salary for the next three seasons. You win Cups with strength down the middle and the Avalanche are now rocking Nathan MacKinnon, Brock Nelson, Nazem Kadri and Nicolas Roy at centre for at least this season and next.

For all the names we bandied about leading up to the deadline, very few people imagined veteran John Carlson being moved by the Washington Capitals. However, after 1,143 games in D.C. — and a franchise-best 771 points by a D-man — Carlson is headed west to the Ducks.

Anaheim’s power play ranks 23^rd in the NHL right now and Carlson, even at 36 years old, can certainly help with that. The right-shot blue-liner can become a UFA on July 1.

While the Blues didn’t ultimately deal any of their prime assets — namely Robert Thomas, Colton Parayko and Jordan Kyrou — they returned two 2026 first-round picks by parting with captain Brayden Schenn and defenceman Justin Faulk. Some sort of page-turning had to happen in St. Louis and this was a good start.

The Blues can now re-visit talks for Thomas, Parayko and Kyrou around the NHL Draft, assuming they want to keep going down that path. They’ll also have the flexibility of spending two additional first-rounders how they see fit, whether that’s taking home-run swings on talented prospects or possibly packaging those picks to target a young player.

Sometimes it’s more about the overall feel of things than the granular details of a deal. If you’re a Wings fan, you’re just happy to see the organization back in a place where it can justify spending a first-round pick on a needle-moving defenceman like righty Justin Faulk.

Faulk has another season left on his deal and gives coach Todd McLellan another puck-mover after the top pair anchored by stud Moritz Seider.

It’s a real tough day in Washington, as Alex Ovechkin and Tom Wilson acknowledged. That said, credit GM Chris Patrick for leaning in during a season where his club — one year after finishing with the top record in the East — is likely to miss the playoffs. Making the hard decision to send John Carlson to Anaheim for a first (assuming the Ducks make the playoffs) one day after netting a second-rounder from Vegas for fourth-line centre Nic Dowd is pretty tidy work.

Washington can regroup in the summer and, in all likelihood, re-invest some of that draft capital into making the squad better for next September. 

Going to chase a Cup with your little bro in Minny? Who made out better than Nick Foligno today?

Asking on behalf of NHL fans and media everywhere: How long does it take and how many lawyers do we need to immediately re-insert a clause in the CBA that allows for double-retention?

The late Kadri bomb couldn’t save what was undeniably a dull deadline day. The new CBA constraints — a playoff salary cap, the inability for middle-man teams to step in an absorb some salary for a sweetener — definitely took some of the starch out of squads’ big-swap dreams.

We get the playoff cap, but why stop teams willing to step in as a third party and eat some money?

It’s not that the Leafs utterly face-planted. It just feels painfully poignant that, one year after giving up a first-rounder and decent prospect for Scott Laughton, all Toronto could re-coup for the centre — who, granted, is now only four months from free agency — was a conditional third-rounder from L.A. That pick becomes a second if the Kings make the playoffs, which is skewing unlikely at the moment. 

It’s going to be fascinating to see what unfolds with this club in the next four months, but you already knew that.

Let’s be clear, you could adopt a point of view where the Sabres are winners based on how quickly GM Jarmo Kekalainen pivoted out of the disappointment of Colton Parayko nixing a trade to Western New York on Wednesday and into a move for back-end defence help with big bodies Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn from Winnipeg. (By the way, we’re intrigued by the Isak Rosen get for the Jets in that swap).

There’s nary a bad vibe to be found in Buffalo these days, but it still had to be disappointing to think an Olympic-calibre defenceman in Parayko was coming your way, only to find out you were going to be Luke Schenn’s 10^th NHL team.

The way the Sabres are going, they’ll just use this as more fuel to keep ripping through the league.