NHL Trade Rumors: Kings shopping Marian Gaborik

The Los Angeles Kings are attempting to trade Marian Gaborik.

Going into the 2017 NHL trade deadline, the Los Angeles Kings, as usual, are a bit limited thanks to their salary cap situation. One of the biggest reasons is all of the long-term contracts they have. Arguably the worst of them is for forward Marian Gaborik, who has four years left on his deal at an expensive $4.875 million cap hit. It should come as no surprise the Kings are trying to trade him.

Trading Gaborik is obviously going to be very hard to do. He has a lot of term left and he’s not living up to his deal. Injuries have hampered him a bit, but even when healthy, Gaborik hasn’t been producing much. Over the past two seasons, he’s played in 92 games. Gaborik has a mere 35 points and 18 goals during that span.

The Kings likely don’t want to retain salary, but in this case, it would make sense. Unless they can persuade the Vegas Golden Knights to take him in the expansion draft, moving him could be very hard. Luckily, Gaborik doesn’t have a no trade clause or no movement clause, so this makes a trade much more feasible.

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Among teams interested in him could be the Arizona Coyotes, Carolina Hurricanes, and New Jersey Devils. Each of those teams has a lot of cap space and has used their cap space as a unique way to get assets. However, unlike situations in which those teams have done that, Gaborik is healthy. Arizona has done so with Chris Pronger, Pavel Datsyuk and David Bolland, but neither of them are expected to play again. Carolina took on Bryan Bickell because it helped them get Teuvo Teravainen. The Devils traded for Marc Savard under similar circumstances.