Florida’s Jason Demers traded to Arizona for Jamie McGinn

As training camp battles continue in the NHL, the Arizona Coyotes are engaged in on-ice training, but one notable absentee is Jamie McGinn. The forward has not made an appearance on the ice so far this training camp, and according to growing speculation, there could be a very good reason for that:

He’s been traded to Florida, for Jason Demers.

The news first broke through HNIC’s Elliott Friedman earlier today:

It was then picked up by Arizona media, including our own Managing Editor who kept a close eye on John Chayka as the negotiations continued:

Then came confirmation... the Coyotes had got their man:

And that was the deal done. The Coyotes, through Chayka, have traded Jamie McGinn straight up for Jason Demers, and suddenly they look a whole lot better. Consider this... the Coyotes have managed to trade a surplus winger for a top-four defenseman, and done so for a ridiculously cheap price.

Not only that, they’ve managed to do so while convincing the Panthers to retain salary, with 12.5% of Demers’ salary remaining on the Panthers cap (giving us a cap hit of $3.9M through 2020-21, slightly higher than McGinn’s $3.3M through 2018-19).

We’ll have an in-depth piece to come, but these two tweets should tell you just how good a trade this is.

As a comparison to Demers, let’s take a look at the price Edmonton paid for Adam Larsson last season:

John Chayka has managed to completely subvert the NHL trade market, simply by thinking a little more cleverly, and made some “traditional hockey men” like Peter Chiarelli and Dale Tallon look pretty bad along the way with this trade, too.