An hour passed.
Literally, 60 minutes. The NHL trade deadline was at 3 p.m. ET on Friday, which is 2 p.m. Central, 1 p.m. Mountain, and 12 noon on the West Coast. And when that time arrived, and for the next 59 minutes, it looked like Nazem Kadri was staying put with the Calgary Flames.
But at 4 p.m. ET, NHL insider Elliotte Friedman arrived with this post on X:
Nazem Kadri back to the Colorado Avalanche
— Elliotte Friedman (@FriedgeHNIC) March 6, 2026
Kadri reunites with the Avalance, which wasn’t a surprise.
Everyone was confused with how it happened.
MORE: Avalanche traded away, traded for defensemen born on exact same day
How did the Avalanche trade for Nazem Kadri after the deadline?
The key to the deadline is that that’s when teams have to have their trade calls in to the league office by.
But once they call, at that last-minute logjam, there’s a queue. They can’t all get through to submit their trades at once.
So for the Kadri deal to be legal, it just has to have been agreed to and called in by the deadline. It doesn’t actually have to be made official by the league by the deadline.
There were a ton of deals reported by insiders after that clock struck 3 p.m. ET, because teams had taken until the last second to make them. At that point, the news has to get leaked to the reporters somehow for it to get reported.
That’s what can cause such a crazy delay.
In the end, the Avalanche get Kadri, just in a very funky way.
