Weekend power rankings: It’s time to start getting excited about the trade deadline

Trades are the best.

I mean, not for the players, who have to pack up on short notice and move to new cities, severing friendships and disrupting family lives. And not for the GMs, some of whom are going to make a mistake that ultimately gets them fired over the next few weeks.

But for fans? Yeah, for us, trades are the best.

We all know the song-and-dance that goes on in the NHL. You can’t make trades after free agency, because everybody likes their roster. And you can’t make them in training camp, because everybody’s healthy. And you can’t make them early in the season, because we can’t overreact to a few weeks. And you can’t make them in the middle of the season, because the salary cap makes that too hard even though it doesn’t.

But the trade deadline? Yes, you can make trades at the deadline. It can be done. So get to wheeling and dealing, boys. Let’s see some moves.

Granted, we’re still three weeks away from deadline day, and in a typical year, we might be getting ahead of ourselves. But the trend in recent seasons has been away from the do-it-all-on-one-day approach, and more toward spreading out the action over the days and weeks before. That’s not good if you’re a TV producer with a 10-hour deadline day show to fill, but it works for the rest of us. And we’ve already seen two fairly big deals in the last week, so it’s possible that the deadline crunch is already here.

The first of those deals came on Monday, with the Leafs adding Jake Muzzin from the Kings. The Penguins and Panthers got into the act over the weekend, with Pittsburgh landing Nick Bjugstad and Jared McCann in exchange for Derick Brassard, Riley Sheahan and three picks. That one was really the best kind of pre-deadline deal, in that it gave us plenty to talk about without actually taking a big name out of play since the Panthers are expected to flip Brassard again in the coming weeks.

We’ve still got plenty of big names on the board, including perhaps the biggest we’ve seen out there at deadline time in years. Artemi Panarin sure sounds like he’s going to be moved, even if there are arguments to be made that the Blue Jackets should keep him. Columbus has lost five straight and are in danger of falling out of a wild-card spot, so the situation there is getting to the critical stage. Patiently waiting three more weeks to see how everything shakes out may not be an option.

The Senators aren’t under quite the same pressure, but their decisions over the next few weeks will be just as important. There’s still no extensions in place for Mark Stone or Matt Duchene, or even really all that much buzz that they’re close. The latest word is that it may be trending towards both players being traded, which makes the Senators one of the key teams to watch.

We’re all still waiting for the Rangers to start making moves, with the Jets apparently a leading contender for Kevin Hayes. The Kings still have Jeff Carter and Alec Martinez. The Flyers will move Wayne Simmonds, if and when they stop winning every game they play. Micheal Ferland has becomes this year’s annual “guy that everyone is treating as a superstar so you just kind of go with it even though you didn’t think he was that good” deadline name. The Blackhawks might be open to moving Duncan Keith. And then there’s Jimmy Howard, Dougie Hamilton, Jay Bouwmeester and whatever hijinks the Oilers might get up to.

Not all of those guys will get moved, but it’s shaping up to be a fun few weeks. And now that it’s February, we can stop treating the deadline like some far-off destination and start talking about it in the present tense. It’s here. Or at least, it’s close enough. Let’s get crazy.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards a summer of keg stands and fountain pool parties.

Good news, hockey fans: We’ve made it past the bye weeks. Group high-five.

This was the first year that the NHL grouped everyone’s byes into the two weeks surrounding the all-star game. It resulted in huge chunks of the league being off at the same time, but it made a certain amount of sense. And it had the advantage of making it easier to ensure that we wouldn’t get those matchups where one team is coming off of their bye while the other has already been back in action.

Except that, well, it didn’t do that after all. Almost half the league still got those type of matchups. That seems odd and is further evidence that none of us will ever understand how the NHL schedule works.

5. Nashville Predators (31-19-4, +27 true goals differential*) – Their next five are against the Coyotes, Stars, the Blues twice and then the Red Wings. Arizona’s playing well and they lost to Dallas just a few days ago, but that’s a stretch where a team like the Predators should pick up some serious points. If they can’t, we might be getting close to the point where we can call the race in the Central.

4. San Jose Sharks (30-16-7, +24) – Brent Burns scored a nifty OT winner on Saturday to help the Sharks keep pace with/gain ground on the Flames. But the bigger news in the Pacific these days is the Knights, who’ve lost four straight. We spent the last month watching these three teams pull away from the pack, and wondering which one would blink first. Now we know, and the question becomes whether the Knights get an opportunity to regain that ground, or whether we pencil them in for third spot and a road opener in the playoffs.

>> Read the full post at The Athletic

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Grab bag: Shoot the glove

In the Friday Grab Bag:
- I have an idea for how we handle Henrik Lundqvist during the Rangers rebuild.
- The Derick Brassard trade may have changed everything and we missed it.
- An obscure player from the deadline day Stastny trade. No, the other one.
- The week's three comedy stars
- And this week's YouTube breakdown marks the 25th anniversary of Teemu Selanne's most memorable moment...

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports

Trade deadline winners and losers

Well that was fun.

After a busy deadline day that saw 16 deals involving 31 players, it’s going to take some time to sort it all out. [Takes a few minutes to sort it all out.] Yep, that’ll do it, let’s get to the winners and losers.

Winner: Deadline day anticipation

For years, we watched as NHL GMs got their dealing done early, finalizing their biggest moves in the days and even weeks leading up to deadline day. And whenever it happened, we’d all shake our heads and mumble about saving some of the action for the big day.

This year, that’s what the GMs did. Apart from Derick Brassard and Rick Nash, all of the biggest names were still available heading into this morning. Heck, they were all still available with an hour to go. If you wanted to see the drama go down to the wire like it did in the old days, today was your day.

Loser: Deadline day reality

No Erik Karlsson trade. No Max Pacioretty. No Mike Green. No Jack Johnson. No big-name surprises, unless you count Paul Stastny. It wasn’t a bad deadline day, but given how it was shaping up by mid-afternoon, it was starting to feel like a letdown. Luckily, two teams stepped up to save the day…

Winners: The Lightning and Rangers

They kept us waiting, not just until the deadline but well past it as we waited for the details of their blockbuster to leak out. But the wait was worth it.

Steve Yzerman went out and got his big-time defenseman, but it turned out not be Karlsson after all. Instead, he lands McDonagh and J.T. Miller for Vladislav Namestnikov, picks and prospects. That potentially reunites McDonagh with Dan Girardi, gives the Lightning one of the best 1-2 blue line punches in the league, and cements their status as the clear-cut Stanley Cup favourite. And he did it without giving up a key young piece like Mikhail Sergachev or Brayden Point. Yzerman is not playing around.

As for the Rangers, they told us what they were going to do and then they did it. Jeff Gorton got a nice haul for Nash, and he loads up on futures in this deal. Did he get enough for McDonagh, who still has a year left on a very team-friendly deal? It’s a decent return, but not an eye-popping one. But sometimes when you decide to rebuild, you have to be willing to make a clean break, if only to avoid that mushy middle so many teams are stuck in.

This deal, along with the Nash trade, certainly does that.

These are two teams headed purposefully and aggressively in opposite directions. There were no half-measures here. And their late-day bomb seemed to suck some of the air out of the rest of deadline day, leaving a few teams largely on the sidelines. Such as…

Loser: Ottawa

Just Ottawa. Not the front office. Not the team. Not the city. The whole thing. All of it.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Weekend wrap: Deadline day edition

They made us wait for it. But with the clock ticking down to today’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline, NHL GMs finally got serious over the weekend, making a handful of meaningful deals. There’s plenty left on the market for today, but let’s get caught up on what the last few days has meant.

The Senators and Penguins kicked things off on Friday, with a little help from the Golden Knights. The Derick Brassard deal was complicated in its execution, but relatively simple in principle. The contending Penguins get even better down the middle, with Brassard instantly becoming just about the best third-line centre in the league.

The rebuilding Senators get some nice future assets, while also saving money. It makes sense for both teams, especially the Penguins. (As for the Golden Knights, we’re still trying to figure out what they get out of the deal beyond spending millions of dollars on a mid-round pick and an enforcer. Maybe it was about keeping Brassard out of the West, but it’s rare that you see one Cup contender volunteer to facilitate another’s improvement, let along write a check to do it.)

After a minor deal saw the Oilers send Brandon Davidson to the Islanders for a third, word of the next big trade dropped on Saturday night, although we had to wait until Sunday morning for it to become official. Boston gives up a ransom to get Rick Nash out of New York in a deal that signals that Don Sweeney and the Bruins are going for it all this year. But the price was high here; there’s a case to be made that going from Ryan Spooner to Nash isn’t all that much of an upgrade, let alone one worth spending a first-round pick on. (As far as first impressions go, Spooner had two points last night.)

From there, the Canadian teams took back the spotlight, with the Leafs and Canadiens hooking up on a rare deal. That one sent Tomas Plekanec to the Leafs for a second-round pick and two quasi-prospects. That’s not a bad haul for Montreal, especially since they can always re-sign Plekanec in the off-season. Meanwhile, the Leafs get some depth, and still have cap room to make another deal or two today. That move was followed by another Oilers deal, this one sending Mark Letestu to Columbus via Nashville. Edmonton gets Pontus Aberg, fulfilling Peter Chiarelli’s preference to get players who can help now over draft picks.

All in all, not a bad weekend. But there are still plenty of names left on the market, including the big one. Erik Karlsson is still a Senator as of this morning, but his odds of making it to the end of the day that way seem to be getting slimmer.

The Lightning still look like the favourites here, although the Predators, Sharks, and any number of late-emerging contender are lurking. There’s also Max Pacioretty, Evander Kane, Mike Green and Thomas Vanek, as well as slightly longer shots like Mike Hoffman and Ryan McDonagh. We spent the last few years telling NHL GMs “save it for deadline day”. These year they did, so get ready for what could be a long day.

We’ll be back this afternoon with a full rundown of all the winners and losers from the 2018 deadline. But as we settle in and wait for today’s action to kick off, let’s double-down on this week’s power rankings. We’ll use the regular versions to get caught up on the actual games played this weekend, then mix in some bonus lists to get set for today’s intrigue.

Road to the Cup

The five teams that look like they’re headed towards Stanley Cup favorite status.

5. Boston Bruins (37-15-8, +44 true goals differential*) – Two weekend losses, including Saturday’s controversial finish in Toronto, weren’t even close to the most interesting thing to happen to the Bruins, who also traded for Nash, signed Brian Gionta and got the scare of watching Patrice Bergeron leave the ACC in a walking boot. (He was back in the lineup last night.)

4. Vegas Golden Knights (41-16-4, +49) – The Vegas Flu outbreak continues with no cure in sight, as the Knights wrapped up their latest homestand with five wins in seven.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Saturday storylines: The McDavid Factor

Welcome to the first Saturday of the NHL season. And welcome to a new weekly feature. Every Saturday this year we’ll take a look around the league at some of the best games, storylines and head-to-head matchups that we’ll be seeing that night. We’ll also dip into the archives for a quick history lesson, and make a prediction that (spoiler alert) will end up being wrong. It should be fun.

Hockey is a team game, fans are constantly reminded. The word is basically inscribed directly into the brains of anyone who sets foot in an NHL arena. You win as a team and lose as a team. There’s no “I” in team. And without question, no single player can ever be bigger than the team.

Great. With that out of the way, let’s spend the next few paragraphs talking about Connor McDavid.

Last year, he won the Art Ross and the Hart Trophy as a 20-year-old. This year, virtually everyone is picking him to do it again. These days he’s in every ad, on every poster and just went first overall in your office hockey pool. The hype train hasn’t just left the station; it’s sprouted wings, gone airborne and is skywriting “MCDAVID IS AWESOME” over every rink in the league.

And after watching him in Wednesday’s season opener, it feels like we may have undersold the kid.

It took him about 30 seconds to get his first breakaway of the season. He had his first goal by the 11-minute mark, coming on a play in which he demonstrated a Wayne Gretzky-like ability to drift into an empty spot where the puck was about to arrive. And then midway through the third period, with the game on the line, came this:

I mean, what do you do against a player who can do that? Really, what are your options? Tackle him? Leave two guys back in your own zone at all times, just in case? Pray? Players aren’t supposed to get faster with the puck on their stick, but McDavid has shown up and broken the NHL’s physics engine. What’s the plan here?

The Flames sure don’t know. They got the schedule at the same time we all did. They spent the last few months knowing that their first game of the regular season would come against McDavid and the Oilers. They have a new goaltender and arguably the best blue line in the league, and they know that the path out of the Pacific probably goes through Edmonton.

They had all the time in the world to come up with a game plan to stop, or at least contain, Connor McDavid.

And we saw what happened.

Tonight’s opponent is the Canucks, finally making their season debut. Like the Flames, they’ve also had plenty of time to think about how to stop McDavid. Unlike the Flames, they do not have one of the best blue lines in the league, although they will have last change. Maybe that helps. It probably won’t.

This season is shaping up to be the Connor McDavid show. Oilers fans are already delirious. The rest of us might as well enjoy the ride… at least on the nights that it’s not our team’s turn to step into the thresher.

>> Read the full post at Sportsnet

Five expected offseason moves we're still waiting for

The dog days of the NHL offseason got a nice jolt on Monday when the Senators and Rangers hooked up on a decent-sized trade. The deal sends Derick Brassard and a seventh to Ottawa in exchange for Mika Zibanejad and a second, improving the Senators’ top six while adding some youth to the Rangers and giving them some additional cap room to work with.

The trade also answered one of the offseason’s lingering questions, which was: When are the Rangers going to get around to doing something? We were all told to expect a busy offseason in New York, as GM Jeff Gorton would look to shake up his aging and expensive core. But until this week, not much had happened aside from a few minor free agency signings. Trading Brassard isn’t exactly a blockbuster, but at least now the Rangers are on the board.

But that still leaves a few more stories lingering in the “still waiting” file. Here are five moves everyone went into the offseason expecting to see that still haven’t happened yet.

The move: The Kevin Shattenkirk trade.

Heading into the offseason, it seemed as if Shattenkirk was the most likely blueliner to be on the move. With UFA status a year away, it just didn’t seem as if he was part of the Blues long-term plans. And with holes in the lineup created by other departures and several teams on the market in the hunt for defensive help, trading Shattenkirk seemed like the most obvious move for Blues’ GM Doug Armstrong.

Why hasn’t it happened yet?: The short answer is that Armstrong hasn’t found the right deal yet. But that just leads to the next question: Why not? It’s not like the market for defensemen suddenly dried up this summer; between P.K. Subban, Shea Weber and Adam Larsson, there’s been as much talent on the move as ever, and maybe more. But in Shattenkirk’s case, the move might get complicated. He’s one year away from free agency, so teams may be reluctant to acquire him without a firm sense of how much they’ll have to pay to keep him.

Odds that it still will: High. It just seems like this one has gone too far down the road to be pulled back now, with Shattenkirk’s agent going as far as calling a deal “inevitable” a few weeks ago. Maybe Armstrong has to lower his asking price, and maybe that brings teams like Edmonton back into the mix.

What if it doesn’t?: It’s going to seem awkward if training camp arrives and Shattenkirk is still a Blue. Still, having him in the lineup wouldn’t be the worst thing in the word for a legitimate Cup contender. Conventional wisdom says that you just can’t let a player like that reach free agency without trading him first, but as the Lightning showed with Steven Stamkos last year, sometimes it’s better to stay the course. Still, that’s risky territory for the Blues, and it’s hard to see how this gets that far.

>> Read the full post at The Hockey News