Both Laine and Dubois were not happy in their current situations so swapping the two makes sense for both sides. Laine is currently on IR with an upper-body injury but given the mandatory 14-day quarantine, he should be fully healed once that's completed. Laine was outstanding in his first two seasons, scoring 90 goals in his first 155 NHL games, however he has just 60 goals in 151 games since. In Columbus his centre quality isn't going to improve, so it may be difficult for him to get back on that 40-goal pace we saw early in his career.

Dubois made it well-known that he was looking for a trade out of Columbus and things reached a tipping point on Thursday when head coach John Tortorella benched him for nearly the entire game. Given their backs were against the wall, the Blue Jackets did a pretty nice job turning a disgruntled Dubois and a third-round pick into Laine and Roslovic. For Dubois, he heads to Winnipeg where he will slot in behind Mark Scheifele as their No.2 centre and will most likely have either Nikolaj Ehlers or Kyle Connor on his wing.

In a late-night Boxing Day deal, the Senators brought in veteran centre Derek Stepan from Arizona. Stepan has one-year left on his deal, which carries a $6.5M cap-hit (per PuckPedia) and should prove to be a veteran stop-gap while the Senators' young centres continue to develop. Sepand has a chance to step into the Senators' top-6 and potentially play with Brady Tkachuk and/or Evgenii Dadonov. The last couple of seasons have been rough for Stepan, but he brings great shot volume and a reliable two-way game to a team with a lot of youth.

Dahlstrom served as the Jets' No.7 defenseman in 2020, picking up just one assist in 15 games. Dahlstrom won't be a regular on a deep Vegas blueline but could serve as a No.7 defenseman with them as well.