The NHL Trade Deadline
Hurricanes and Senators Kick-Start Hockey's Swapping Season
The Carolina Hurricanes and Ottawa Senators got the NHL's trading season going with an old-fashioned 4-player deal. Will the swap open the league's trading floodgates?
The NHL’s trade deadline is usually thought of as a time when contenders load up while the bottom feeders dump their high-priced help. The first significant move of this year’s trading season, though, looks like a good old-fashioned hockey trade.
Ottawa Senators GM Bryan Murray saw that his team had needs. The biggest was a need for secondary scoring. Beyond their top line of Daniel Alfredsson, Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza, the Sens have trouble putting the biscuit in the basket. The second was a leftover from last spring’s bruising loss to Anaheim in the Stanley Cup final. The Senators must get tougher.
Both Canes and Sens Addressed Needs
Murray addressed both those needs by acquiring sniper Cory Stillman and hard rock blueliner Mike Commodore from the Carolina Hurricanes. The price: promising, but injury-plagued forward Patrick Eaves and offensive-minded defenseman Joe Corvo.
What makes this a genuine talent-for-talent hockey trade is that Eaves and Corvo, while both relatively young and cheap with good upsides, are both established NHL players. On top of that, in making this deal, the Canes are by no means throwing in the towel on their season.
While on the outside looking in at a playoff spot at the time of the trade, Carolina was just a single point behind Washington for the Southeast Division lead. The Southeast winner gets the third seed in the Eastern Conference and home ice advantage in the opening playoff round. A power play quarterback like Corvo is just what the doctor ordered for Carolina.
Both teams ultimately addressed glaring needs. Carolina makes a couple of inexpensive additions for the future without compromising this year’s playoff run. The Sens get bigger and tougher and add the second tier goal scoring they so desperately need, making them the clear Eastern Conference favorite.
Will the NHL’s Trade Floodgates Open?
So, will this open the floodgates in the lead-up to the February 26th trade deadline? The short answer is maybe.
Loading up with talent at the deadline is an exercise fraught with peril. Last season, the Islanders coughed up a ton of futures for Edmonton stud Ryan Smyth. Nashville traded top draft picks and Scott Upshall for Peter Forsberg. Atlanta brought in Keith Tkachuk for Glen Metropolit and 3 picks. All 3 gave up first round picks in the deals.
What did it get them? All 3 went down in the first round winning a total of 2 games between them. None of Smyth, Forsberg or Tkachuk remains with the team that picked them up at the deadline.
Armed with that knowledge, why would any NHL GM, especially in the world of the salary cap, want to mortgage the future for a very uncertain present?
Let’s get back to Ottawa. In discussing the Carolina trade, GM Murray provided a raft of reasons for why he pulled the trigger. Of those, he only half-jokingly mentioned that the local media had been bugging him to make a trade all season.
And there’s the rub. As the days get short to the deadline, the pressure will grow on plenty of GMs to do something – anything. Whether it’s adding a piece for a Cup run or just in the hopes of sneaking into the spring dance, there will be terrific temptation to make moves.
At least, that’s what fans, the media and a few bottom-feeding clubs are hoping.
