Tuesday, February 21, 2017

Deadline preview, part one: The sellers

We're now just over one week away from the annual NHL trade deadline. Any and all deals involving NHL roster players must be done by 3:00 ET on Wednesday, March 1. And with just eight days to go, the market is heating up.

We hope. Please let it be heating up. Because Lord, nobody's doing anything right now. When you're breaking down the big Viktor-Loov-for-Sergey-Kalinin blockbuster, you've found yourself in a sad place. Save us, Michael Stone, you're our only hope.

But that can all change quickly. In a league infested with parity, one big move somewhere could be the one that gets all the dominoes falling. And with just eight days to go, pressure is mounting around the league to get something—anything—done.

So which teams are worth keeping an eye on? Not everyone will be busy, but most of the league will do something. So over the next few days, we're going to take a look at which teams should be facing a busy week. Tomorrow, we'll look at the league's buyers. And today, we'll start with the all-important sellers.

Colorado Avalanche

Where they're at: The Avalanche aren't just bad. They're not even just "dead last place" bad. There's actually a decent argument to be made that this could be the worst team we've seen since the start of the salary cap era.

All of which makes them sellers in the traditional sense, meaning they'll be moving veterans with expiring deals like Jarome Iginla, John Mitchell and Rene Bourque. But the Avalanche are facing something far bigger. Much like the Oilers of recent years, the Avs have built a talented young core that, for whatever reason, just doesn't seem to add up to winning. It's time to move on from someone like Matt Duchene or Gabriel Landeskog, and those deals could happen this week. GM Joe Sakic is apparently asking for plenty, but he's not being unreasonable; if he moves on of his key young pieces, he'd better hit a home run.

In a perfect world: One or more of the teams sniffing around Duchene and Landeskog decide to stop playing PR games with friendly media and start getting serious, and somebody meets Sakic's price tag. Meanwhile, Iginla's reputation as one of the most respected veterans in the league overrides his middling performance this year, and Sakic is able to flip him for a first-round pick. Mix in a few smaller rentals, and the Avs come away from the deadline with a haul of picks and prospects, and the future looks bright.

But it's more likely that: Sakic plays the "it's just too hard to make a big deal during the season" card, as he's already started to do, and kicks the Duchene/Landeskog can down the road to the summer. Iginla only brings in a second-round pick (if that), and Avalanche fans come away questioning whether the team's best chance to turn a corner just slipped away.

Arizona Coyotes

Where they're at: Well ahead of the Avalanche, but that's about where the good news ends. They're going to finish 29th, missing the playoffs for the fifth straight year. Worse, they've taken a significant step back in what was supposed to be a year of progress.

As a team that's already been solidly in rebuild mode for years, there aren't a ton of big-name veteran assets here to move. But rookie GM John Chayka will need to find a way to extract some value in his first crack at the deadline. He got started Monday, sending Stone to the Calgary Flames for a third and a conditional fifth. That's not bad, but there's plenty more to do.

In a perfect world: Captain Shane Doan agrees to waive his no-movement clause to join a contender, and gives the team enough options to stoke a bidding war. Chayka manages to get someone to meet his sky-high demands for Martin Hanzal, and also does well on deals for Radim Vrbata and maybe even struggling prospect Anthony Duclair.

But it's more likely that: The Coyotes should do reasonably well. Vrbata will bring back something, and Hanzal has enough buzz around him that somebody might actually pay up even though he's, you know, Martin Hanzal.

Doan could be trickier, since he still doesn't seem completely sure that he wants to go, and could also give the team a list of destinations that's so short that all Chayka can do is find him a good home and wish him well, without much coming back the other way.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports




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