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One GM thinks there could be trades before Olympic freeze

Jim Rutherford

Sometimes if you want to move, you have to move fast.

Take the 2012 NHL trade deadline, the last one the league had during a full season. The cutoff date may have been Feb. 27, but that’s not when all the deals went down. The Flyers, for example, picked up Nicklas Grossmann on Feb. 16, and they got Pavel Kubina the day after that. Jeff Carter was traded from Columbus to Los Angeles on Feb. 23.

This season, the trade deadline is set for March 5. And as ESPN’s Pierre LeBrun notes, there’s another deadline of sorts -- Feb. 7, when a trade freeze for the Olympic break goes into effect.

That’s just over three weeks away.

“If they can do it, most teams would like to [make their move before the Olympic break],” Carolina general manager Jim Rutherford told Lebrun.

It remains to be seen if the 2014 trade deadline, including the days leading up to it, is a busy one. As Canucks GM Mike Gillis said late last week, “I can tell you there is very little trade discussion going on anywhere. It’s difficult to make trades when you have the cap lowered and teams’ financial resources under the cap have been used up.”

It’s also worth mentioning that, at this point, only five or six teams have essentially no shot at making the playoffs. How many more will become sellers in the next few weeks? That too remains to be seen.

Related: Jets GM could ‘maybe move some pieces’