Winning is the only thing that matters in the world of professional sports. The key to bringing home a championship? Good leadership. Obviously, good leadership alone, amongst a lackluster roster, can’t single-handedly guarantee a win, but it can be the deciding factor on who leaves with the title. All the big-four sports leagues (the MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL) are eligible to elect captains, though the title holds more weight in some leagues than others. Regardless, a sports team should never trade their captain.
Captaincy is not a common practice in the MLB, with only three teams naming captains as of the 2024 season. According to the NBA rulebook, a team may have a captain and a co-captain, but not every team chooses to select the positions. In the NFL, most teams sport six captains, with some even going beyond that. Lastly, in the NHL, a team can appoint a captain and two alternate captains, who don the letter “A” instead of a “C.” If an NHL captain is injured, or just unnamed, the team can designate a third alternate captain.
The title of captain holds a lot more importance in hockey than in the other major sports, since it is a harder title to secure, with their only being one named per team. The NHL also takes its captaincy seriously, as every team currently has a captain except for the New York Rangers, who traded captain Jacob Trouba in December 2024. One benefit of wearing the “C” in the NHL comes with winning the Stanley Cup. It’s tradition that when the team is presented with the cup, the captain is the first to receive it and typically hoists it up and does a victory lap around the ice. Captains are very crucial to NHL success, and trading them can negatively impact a team’s playoff run. Only two teams have won without a captain since 1917—the 1970 and 1972 Boston Bruins—so removing the position lessens their odds of winning and creates confusion on who would hoist the cup first.
With that being said, I think the last thing a team should do is trade their captain. I am speaking largely in reference to the NHL here, since it is unreasonable for an NFL team to consider six-plus players untouchable. While this title is rarely used in the MLB and NBA, they still shouldn’t trade their captain.
Trading a captain, especially mid-season, can also cause disharmony in the locker room. Management tells its players to follow their captain’s lead, listen to their locker room speeches and replicate their play or behavior. Then, suddenly, your leader is gone and now everyone is scrambling. This leadership change could cause even bigger issues, especially if the team selected the captain not only for leadership skills, but for production as well. Now you’re missing someone who was looked up to, and your top talent. The energy is off, and so is your level of playing.
Lastly, it’s just a bad look. You clearly value this player’s contributions enough to give them a title role. If you continually trade your captains, it shows that you don’t care about the face of your franchise. The second you sew a letter on to a player’s jersey, they become the default representation of your team; their jersey will be the first one available at your team’s pro-shops and their number is the one most seen around your arena. Why would any player want to play for your franchise when you don’t respect their leader? What player would dream of becoming captain for a team that will trade them away on a whim? When appointing a captain, you want not only a good leader, player and representative of your team, but someone who wants to be there.
With all the recent blockbuster trades happening right now, it’s important to highlight who teams should deem untouchable. The point of trading players is to improve a team’s skill level, but it’s important to recognize the other contributions a player can have. Make the trade to improve production but remember you must fill the leadership role a captain leaves behind for players and fans. You want players to want to play for you and want fans to actively engage with you. If you trade away the key to your team, the captain, you also trade away the key of engaging your fans.