Friday, March 5, 2010

Signs your GM had a bad deadline day

Luca Caputi
Apparently somebody tampered
with his rolodex.
Another trade deadline has come and gone. And in between reporting on 30 different trades involving players you'd never heard of just a few days ago, the hockey media is rushing to declare winners and losers from around the league.

But of course, you don't care about the entire league. You care about your favorite team, and just how badly they managed to screw up this time around. So I've assembled a handy list of a dozen signs that your favorite team's GM had a bad deadline day:

  • On deadline day, Twitter's top local trending topic for your city was the word "Fergusonesque".

  • Instead of listening to his scouting staff or consulting his front office assistants, he came up with all his trade ideas by reading threads at hfboards.com.

  • He explains to the media that he was under the mistaken impression that his contract included a no-trade clause.

  • He keeps complaining that over the past two weeks Brian Burke never got back to him about any of his offers for Ryan Miller, Patrick Kane and Zach Parise.

  • Everyone at your office who followed the deadline on the web has a call into the helpdesk because their keyboards have worn out "f" and "u" keys.

  • Every time one of your team's trades was announced on TSN, Pierre McGuire stopped yelling at Darren Pang and just stared into the camera like the guy from Munch's The Scream.

  • The guy who programs the trade AI for NHL 10 called your team's trades "laughably unrealistic".

  • He explained that his entire strategy is to acquire enough expiring contracts to free up cap room to sign Lebron James.

  • That cell phone he spent all day screaming offers into turned out to be a Game Boy.

  • The plan: Address a need for toughness and experience by trading for Raffi Torres. The result: Addressed a need for catchy children's music by trading for Raffi Cavoukian.

  • You saw a guy in line for a cab at the airport arrivals gate who looked suspiciously like Vesa Toskala.




19 comments:

  1. Saving the best to last there then eh?

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  2. That no-trade clause is brilliant ... too bad it can't also be real.

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  3. Raffi Cavoukian would do a mean cover of "Free to Be".

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  4. I knew there would be a Vesa joke in there somewhere! Bazinga!

    The HF boards one was brilliant also.

    But in fairnes I bet someone posted a "trade proposal" that went something like this
    "do you think we could package Stajan Mayers and White +" to get Dion Phaneuf?

    And if I had read that two months ago I would have laughed my head off.

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  5. I would be worried if Toskala was pegged to be the starter. As a backup playing 2 or 3 games for the Flames... I am not as concerned.

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  6. I was not previously aware of children's-songs Raffi's last name. Learn something new every day!

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  7. Another good indication is that the post-deadline pres --

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  8. Hi. I'd like to announce absolutely nothing new.

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  9. ....Goddammitsomuch.

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  10. "The guy who programs the trade AI for NHL 10 called your team's trades "laughably unrealistic"."

    Personally, I can't believe the Chara for Zetterberg trade only went down on my NHL 10 copy

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  11. Toskala >>> McElhinney before even considering that Toskala's contract expires at the end of this year and McE's the following year.

    Also, thanks to eastern media bias you missed out on Phaneuf turning into McCabe over the last couple of seasons. Have fun with that, Toronto.

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  12. @Brian/Bryan...

    Well played.

    @Anonymous...

    Toskala may be better than McElhinney (although not according to his numbers). But financially, the Flames are worse off. They'll pay Toskala roughly the same amount this year that they owed McElhinney for two years. And now they also need to pay another backup goalie next season. They're losing money on the deal, no question.

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  13. How 'bout them Flyers not making any trades leaving them with the goaltending combo of Leighton/Boucher for their playoff run? Thought that would have gotten in there somewhere.

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  14. So, how far into the offseason before Toskala becomes a Flyer. He's certainly the crap goalie they crave in that city.

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  15. "He explained that his entire strategy is to acquire enough expiring contracts to free up cap room to sign Lebron James"

    This is amazing.

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  16. Nice shout out to your Twitter on Hockey Night in Canada! DGB hitting the prime time, congrats!

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  17. Completely unrelated, but on HNIC just now, they showed DGB on the I-Desk! The first thing I thought was 'Hey, I go to that website sometimes!' So, in a way, I was on HNIC vicariously, through you! Congrats!

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  18. "He explained that his entire strategy is to acquire enough expiring contracts to free up cap room to sign Lebron James."

    Hahaha... I love it!

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  19. If the team misses out on LeBron James, they can always make a trade with Carolina for Michal Jordan.

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