Trade (sports)

In professional sports within the United States and Canada, a trade is a sports league transaction between sports clubs involving the exchange of player rights from one team to another. Though player rights are the primary trading assets, draft picks and cash are other assets that may be supplemented to consummate a trade, either packaged alongside player rights to be transferred to another team, or as standalone assets in exchange for player rights and/or draft picks in return. Typically, trades are completed between two clubs, but there are instances where trades are consummated between three or more clubs.
Trades only involve players who are under contract with their current teams; free agent players, whose contracts have expired, cannot be traded by their former teams, and are free to join a different team.
==No-trade clause==
A no-trade clause is an amendment to a contract, usually relevant in North American professional sports, wherein a player may not be traded to another club without the player's consent. Sometimes this clause is implemented by the club itself, but the vast majority are requested by the athlete and their sports agent to avoid being sent to a non-contending club and/or a club in an unattractive city. In many cases, these no-trade clauses are limited, where a club may be limited to trading the athlete only at certain times, or only to a certain team or geographical area.
No-trade clauses are found in most sports in North America, including Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, Major League Soccer, and some minor leagues around the country. Many European leagues, mostly professional soccer and basketball, also implement these contract amendments.
Each league usually has its own rules regarding these clauses; for example in the NBA, no-trade clauses can only be negotiated into contracts when a player has at least four years of service for the team he is signing the contract with and at least eight years total in the NBA.Larry Coon. "NBA Salary Cap FAQ" Other leagues have other varying rules, for example in MLB the "Ten and Five" rule gives most players limited control on their tradability once they meet the ten and five criteria, which means the player has played in the league ten seasons and with the current team for at least five.
In the NHL, these rights have been blamed for the lack of trades that have been pulled off in recent years, with critics citing examples where "done deals" were blown up by "selfish players." Despite having a no-trade clause in the contract, players have often demanded to be traded and then use the no-trade clause to select a preferable destination team, even though this would not give the maximum value to the team he is departing. To avoid such a potential situation an astute general manager would first demand that the player waive the no-trade clause before considering a trade, though this would reduce the player's leverage.
===Waiver of no-trade clause===
Often the no-trade clause is waived by the players themselves, usually in order to play for a contending team.
====NHL====
Darryl Sittler's no-trade clause protected him from being moved, when Toronto Maple Leafs owner Harold Ballard and manager Punch Imlach wanted to get rid of or reduce Sittler's influence on the team (Imlach instead traded Lanny McDonald to spite Sittler); a few years later Sittler waived the clause when relations between him and Ballard deteriorated. Dany Heatley demanded a trade from the Ottawa Senators at the end of the 2008–09 season; a deal was in place to send Heatley to the Edmonton Oilers on June 30, but Heatley refused to waive his no-trade clause (the Oilers had missed the playoffs for three straight seasons), so he was traded to the San Jose Sharks instead, with the Senators receiving a much lesser package than the one offered by the Oilers. Rick Nash demanded a trade from the Columbus Blue Jackets during the 2011–12 NHL season, but the deal could not be completed due to general manager Scott Howson's high asking price from the teams to whom Nash would have permitted a trade. The holdout lasted into the summer of 2012, when he was traded to the New York Rangers for Brandon Dubinsky, Tim Erixon, Artem Anisimov, and the Rangers' first-round pick in the 2013 draft.
In an unusual case, Mats Sundin refused to waive his no-trade clause during the latter part of the 2007–08 season, even though his Maple Leafs were on track to miss the playoffs, and his contract was set to expire after the season concluded. Leafs management requested that Sundin waive his no-trade clause in order for the team to rebuild by acquiring potential young talent and/or draft picks, and Sundin was coveted by several teams looking to bolster their roster for the playoffs before the trade deadline. Sundin said he did not believe in being a "rental player" and that if he won the Stanley Cup, he wanted to do it over the course of a whole season.
==Trade deadline==
A trade deadline (or trading deadline) is a rule regulating the trading of professional players' contracts between clubs. In Major League Baseball and the National Hockey League, players acquired through trade after the trade deadline are ineligible for postseason play in that season, unless the respective league allows them to replace an injured player on the roster. In the National Football League, National Basketball Association and Major League Soccer, post-deadline trades are not allowed. This term is used mainly in North America. In the approach to the deadline, there is heightened activity and interest in trades.
The purpose of a trade deadline is to keep competitive balance towards the end of the season.
===NHL===
The National Hockey League's trade deadline is calculated as the 40th day before the final day of the regular season, ensuring that it typically falls during the last week of February or the first week of March. Much like Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association, the NHL's trade deadline is often a period of increased player movement; teams that are either making a final push to secure a playoff spot or hoping to go deep into the playoffs attempt to trade to acquire key veterans or proven scorers in order to solidify their rosters. Conversely, teams that are rebuilding with younger players may be willing to trade away their more expensive players in order to "dump" (reduce) salary and get draft picks/prospects in return. Players on playoff-contending teams who are injured and not expected to return for the current season may be offered to teams that are rebuilding, since they will be of no value to a team's playoff prospects in the current season but may be of value to another team for (a) future season(s). Also, players who are about to become unrestricted free agents and have indicated that they do not intend to return to their current teams may be traded away so that those teams will get something in return, instead of seeing such players sign with another team while their former teams receive nothing.
The NHL trade deadline also generates a great deal of talk among hockey fans and analysts, with much speculation and discussion about which players will get traded and where they will go. In Canada, the NHL trade deadline is treated with such significance that the two major sports networks TSN and Sportsnet devote much of the day to speculation and coverage of trades.
==References==
Category:Terminology