Jonathan Toews admits to having thoughts about leaving Chicago

There is another side to that coin, however. For some teams, it means trading away players that they may not necessarily want to trade, but that they need to in order to kickstart a rebuild or a retooling. Longstanding relationships between those players and their teams are fractured. In a lot of cases, these are players that had been drafted and developed by the team.

From a player to player perspective, there's an impact there as well. These players grow close over a long period of time. They go to war together. The scratch and claw for every win that they can in order to try to contend - to try to reach the postseason. In some cases, they share houses or condos. They attend each others weddings. They play golf together. They become like family. So when they're traded, that has an impact on the friends they leave behind.

In the case of the Chicago Blackhawks, several pieces have been moved between last season and this one. For captain Jonathan Toews, it meant saying goodbye to friends and disrupting connections. From a life perspective, it sucks. But from a business perspective, it's necessary. The players know this. They don't always like it, but they do understand it. From Toews' point of view, this deadline was a tough one to endure. Here's what he had to say to Chicago Sun-Times' Ben Pope on Wednesday:

While Toews has been around long enough to know the business, the human side of things is impossible to avoid. In this case, Toews has found himself wondering what it would be like to be in the departing players' shoes, leaving Chicago and getting a new start elsewhere.

Maybe it's just him getting sentimental, or maybe it's the fact that his contract expires at the end of next season and he could find himself in a similar position to Marc-Andre Fleury or Brandon Hagel. One thing is for sure, Toews is giving it some real thought.

Just like we saw with Flyers captain Claude Giroux this season, we could see something very similar on the horizon for Hawks captain Jonathan Toews next season - staring down the barrel of another trade deadline, but this time it's he who has to make the decision on whether or not to waive his NMC for a chance to compete for his 4th career Stanley Cup.