NHL Rookie GMs Kent Hughes, Kyle Davidson, Pat Verbeek Make Bold Statements At 2022 Trade Deadline

They may be new, but they clearly understood the assignment.

NHL teams typically use the offseason to make changes at the management level, but this year has been different.

Leading up to Monday’s 2022 NHL trade deadline this year, a remarkable four teams had new faces in their general managers’ chairs, following midseason changes.

Kyle Davidson took over in Chicago and Pat Verbeek was hired in Anaheim after Stan Bowman and and Bob Murray both stepped down amidst concerns about their leadership. In Montreal and Vancouver, poor team performance led to the dismissals of Marc Bergevin and Jim Benning. They’ve been replaced by Kent Hughes and Patrik Allvin.

Also remarkable: all four are first-time GMs. Hughes is completely new to NHL front offices, after pivoting from his previous role as a player agent. Davidson was promoted from his assistant GM position in Chicago, and Verbeek and Allvin joined their new teams after serving as assistants in Detroit and Pittsburgh, respectively.

None of the four was shy about stepping into the fray over these past few weeks. Here’s a rundown of each man’s trade-deadline activity, and where it positions his team going forward.

Kent Hughes – Montreal Canadiens

After a decade of watching predecessor Marc Bergevin make bold moves that failed to give the Montreal Canadiens a solid foundation, Kent Hughes has embraced his team’s rebuild.

When all was said and done on Monday, Hughes was the proud owner of 14 picks in the 2022 draft, which is set to be held in Montreal on July 7-8. He also has five first-rounders over the next three years.

Not even a month into his tenure as Montreal’s GM, Hughes got this year’s trade market rolling when he sent Tyler Toffoli to the Calgary Flames on Feb. 14. Last week, he extracted an impressive return from the Florida Panthers in exchange for depth defenseman Ben Chiarot, picking up two draft picks and promising prospect Ty Smilanic.

On trade-deadline Monday, Hughes dealt two-way winger Artturi Lehkonen to the Colorado Avalanche in exchange for a second-round pick and 20-year-old defense prospect Justin Barron, who was a first-rounder in 2020. He added two more picks by sending defenseman Brett Kulak to Edmonton in exchange for William Lagesson.

After all the trades were complete, the Canadiens’ roster was still robust enough to take the Boston Bruins to overtime on Monday night. Since Martin St. Louis took over behind the bench on Feb. 9, Montreal has a record of 9-6-3 and a .583 points percentage, good for 16th-best in the league during that timeframe.

If you look at the St. Louis era on its own, the Canadiens are already a playoff team, after languishing at the bottom of the league through the first half of the season. Hughes’ bold moves in his early days in Montreal have been paying immediate dividends.

Pat Verbeek – Anaheim Ducks

After spending more than a decade working under Steve Yzerman with both the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Detroit Red Wings, Pat Verbeek now has a team of his own.

He was hired as the Anaheim Ducks’ new general manager on Feb. 3. And Verbeek quickly made it known that he wasn’t going to risk letting his pending unrestricted free agents walk away this summer for nothing if he wasn’t able to come to terms on contract extensions.

Over the last week, he made good on his word. Verbeek got a second-round pick and defense prospect Drew Helleson from Colorado in exchange for Josh Manson. Boston swapped three draft picks and entry-level defenseman Urho Vaakanainen in exchange for Hampus Lindholm. Pittsburgh sent two of their own impending UFAs and a goaltending prospect to the Ducks in exchange for Rickard Rakell and Verbeek got a third-round pick from Minnesota in return for rugged forward Nicolas Deslauriers.

That’s a significant haul of assets for one week’s work.

Winless in their last seven games, the Ducks have fallen out of the Western Conference playoff picture after a promising start to their season. But Verbeek has some promising young talent to build around and can continue to reshape his squad this summer.

Kyle Davidson – Chicago Blackhawks

There’s a new kid in town in Chicago. Kyle Davidson has quickly shown that he has what it takes to make bold moves when it comes to his team’s roster.

Just 33, Davidson has worked his way up through the Blackhawks organization. He started as an intern in 2010 and was named assistant general manager in 2019 before being called upon to step in as interim GM last October, after Stan Bowman’s resignation in the wake of the Kyle Beach sexual misconduct scandal.

Last week, Davidson reeled in the biggest haul of the 2022 trade-deadline season. He sent 23-year-old forward Brandon Hagel to the Tampa Bay Lightning in exchange for two young roster players and two first-round draft picks.

The Lightning are eager to replicate their trade-deadline success from two years ago. They paid high prices for two depth forwards with term, Blake Coleman and Barclay Goodrow, then went on to win back-to-back championships.

Davidson turned Hagel into the most expensive trade chip of 2022. That’s as much because of his bargain $1.5 million cap hit with multiple years under team control as his 21-goal breakout season.

Davidson also accomplished the seemingly impossible when he found a new home for Marc-Andre Fleury. Though the Vezina Trophy winner had indicated that he was reluctant to once again uproot his young family less than a year after relocating from Las Vegas, Davidson got Fleury into contact with his former teammate, Bill Guerin, who is now the general manager of the Minnesota Wild.

Fleury agreed to a trade, the Wild got a goaltending upgrade in time for an important postseason for them, and Davidson scored a second-round draft pick for his squad that can get upgraded to a first if the Fleury proves to be a contributor to a significant Wild playoff run.

Patrik Allvin – Vancouver Canucks

In Vancouver, the landscape surrounding Patrik Allvin’s first deadline as a general manager looked a little different. Unlike Montreal, Anaheim and Chicago, there’s still an outside chance that the Canucks could seize a playoff spot.

Mired in 28th place overall when coach Travis Green and GM Jim Benning were relieved of their duties on Dec. 5, the Canucks have gone 22-11-6 since new coach Bruce Boudreau took over. On trade deadline day, they sat four points out of the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.

When new team president Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin came on board in Vancouver, there was talk of remaking the roster to add speed and shed salary. J.T. Miller and Brock Boeser, in particular, were the subject of constant trade rumors.

But the more the Canucks won, the more the messaging changed. Fans were embracing the team’s sudden success — and filling the stands at Rogers Arena, driving much-needed revenue after the financial challenges of the last two years. Did the organization owe it to the players to keep the group intact and see if it could finish the job?

In the end, Allvin made just a couple of smaller moves. On Sunday, he cut salary by $1.5 million and made his blue line younger by trading defenseman Travis Hamonic to Ottawa, then acquiring Travis Dermott from Toronto. Monday saw the departure of Tyler Motte, an important member of Vancouver’s fourth line but a 27-year-old impending UFA who didn’t come to terms with the team on a contract extension.

Allvin will take another swing at making his desired changes in the offseason. With the salary cap still expected to remain relatively flat as the league recovers from its losses due to the pandemic, he and his counterparts will continue to have their work cut out for them.