Mattias Ekholm might be the perfect trade deadline piece: He’s cheap, he’s not a rental, he’s reliable, he has proven playoff success, and he lacks any form of trade protection baked into his contract. In a fraught season where even the smallest transaction prompts massive cap-related headaches, the Predators can expect to receive serious value in return for an excellent player.

Usually, the biggest target on the trade board is someone with a very high-profile whose hockey card stats can be clearly pointed to as being excellent.

Ekholm’s a trickier player, a stable and reliable two-way defenceman who's spent much of his hockey career out of the spotlight since the 2017 Stanley Cup Final. Stuck on a struggling Predators team, Ekholm isn't really front-and-centre in the minds of most hockey fans when creating a check-list of targets to put their team over the top. With that in mind, this is a perfect player to take a much closer look at using both stats and video.