After all of the rumors and speculation for the past few months, the 2023 NHL trade deadline has come and gone. Now that the dust has settled and we have seen what everybody has done (or not done) it is time to hand out some grades.

Every team is in a different situation, with some teams looking to add the final piece to a Stanley Cup puzzle and others simply trying to unload contracts and re-tool for the future.

In handing out grades a few things were kept in mind.

Did the team in question have a plan, or was it just a haphazard approach to the deadline?

Did the team accomplish what it needed or address its needs in a meaningful way?

Did the team get good value?

Did the team meaningfully improve itself in the short term or long term?

Let’s get into it and see how everybody did.

Teams are separated by grade. We begin with the A’s.

The F Grades

Philadelphia Flyers

This a team that just can not seem to get out of its own way. What is the plan here? The Flyers desperately need to rebuild but still talk like a team that thinks it can compete.

General manager Chuck Fletcher finally acknowledged the team was open for business and was going to sell in advance of the trade deadline, but he ended up only trading Zack MacEwen for Brendan Lemieux and a fifth-round draft pick.

Not being able to move James van Riemsdyk is the peak of the failure mountain.

Vancouver Canucks

Try to make sense of this team. The Canucks have not been a relevant contender for more than a decade, and despite that, they always go out of their way to take on big contracts and sign big contracts that do not really get them closer to contention.

All of those contracts made it impossible for them to re-sign Bo Horvat, their captain and best player, and resulted in them trading him. They had a player in Andrei Kuzmenko who could have been a highly sought-after trade candidate, and they re-signed him despite not really being in a position to win. They were unable to move any of their bad contracts and then traded a first-round pick (acquired in the Horvat trade with the New York Islanders) for Filip Hronek.

The value there is fine, but Hronek does nothing for the Canucks now or next season. There are teams where trading a first-round pick for Hronek would make a lot of sense. The Canucks are not that team.

They get an F for simply not having a plan and not making any sense. That seems to be a recurring theme with this organization.