6 hours until the deadline

Here we are six hours until the deadline, and things should really start heating up now. The thing that makes this year interesting is that there are so many teams on the bubble, that it's hard to say who is going to be sellers and who buyers. In the Western Conference, there's only six points separating the 5th place team from the 12th. As we saw last year with Montreal and later Philadelphia, the whole idea is to just make it into the playoffs, and from there anything can happen. With so many teams competing for playoff spots, will it make teams more hesitant to make the big trade or push many to try and add the key player or two to propel them into the playoffs?

In the Eastern conference, Atlanta and Toronto have already started the process by becoming sellers but these two teams are also within playoff contention only being out of the 8th spot by 4 points. Meanwhile the New Jersey Devils just a month ago looked to be a sure bet to unload some players come the trade deadline, but they have been on an incredible run since changing coaches, and have an outside chance of squeezing into the playoffs and from this perspective will most likely stand pat. As always, it will be interesting to see which teams pull the trigger and make the big trade, and which stand pat. We'll all know shortly.