The 2024 trade deadline did exactly what it was supposed to do: it made the rich richer in a very entertaining fashion and injected futures into down-on-their-luck teams with both eyes fixed on tomorrow.

In a week where many hockey fans were begging the NHL to adopt a new draft order system in which position is based on points accrued after being eliminated from post-season contention (therefore incentivizing losing teams to hold on to their good rentals), the excitement of the week leading up to the deadline and the number of talented players who will now be participating in what should be a wildly competitive postseason posed a pretty strong rebuttal. We can now look forward to a playoffs with no clear favourites and a class of powerful contenders who have loaded up.

So let's take a look a