In professional sports within the United States and Canada, a trade is a sports league transaction between sports clubs involving the exchange of player rights from one team to another. Though player rights are the primary trading assets, draft picks and cash are other assets that may be supplemented to consummate a trade, either packaged alongside player rights to be transferred to another team, or as standalone assets in exchange for player rights and/or draft picks in return. Typically, trades are completed between two clubs, but there are instances where trades are consummated between three or more clubs.
NHL Trades only involve players who are under contract with their current teams or RFA players whose rights are owned by the team; free agent players, whose contracts have expired (July 1), cannot be traded by their former teams, and are free to join a different team.
In Major League Baseball, a player to be named later can be used to finalize the terms of a trade at a later date, but draft picks are not admissible as trading assets (with one exception). In Major League Soccer, besides current MLS players and draft picks, clubs may also trade MLS rights to non-MLS players, allocation money, allocation rankings, and international player slots.[1]