ShareThisSome 29 general managers took the temperature of the NHL Wednesday, forecast rainy days ahead and decided to chart a slow and cautious course at the 2009 trade deadline.
Only one decided to roll the dice. That would be the Calgary Flames' Darryl Sutter, and who really was surprised?
For two years now, the Flames have been swimming against the prevailing tide. No one was ever going to hire Mike Keenan again to coach, except Calgary. No one was ever going to sign Todd Bertuzzi to a contract again, except Calgary.
Sutter probably doesn't read a lot of Cervantes these days, but he sure knows something about tilting at windmills.
On an trade-deadline day that was more about the players who weren't traded (Chris Pronger, Jay Bouwmeester) than the ones who were, Sutter made the most tangible splash, acquiring a top-six forward in Olli Jokinen and a top-four defenseman in Jordan Leopold to bolster his team for its playoff run.
There was a direct correlation between the fact that only one impact forward (Jokinen) traded places and only one first-round draft choice went the other way. In a era when the financial implications of a deal almost always trump its hockey repercussions, a lot of GMs backed off when the price -- surrendering something for the future for help in the present -- just went too high.
For the Florida Panthers, the asking price for Bouwmeester was a player from the front end of the roster, plus a top prospect, plus a No. 1 draft choice. Both the Vancouver Canucks and the Philadelphia Flyers made inquiries and found the price too steep.
Similarly, the Boston Bruins eventually did make a deal with the Anaheim Ducks for a defenseman, but it wasn't Pronger, the former Hart Trophy winner, who came their way, but Steve Montador, a support player on Calgary's 2004 team. General manager Peter Chiarelli also added 41-year-old Mark Recchi, a two-time Stanley Cup champion to his team, without giving up a roster player, adding the missing experience to take a run at a championship, but without giving up potential 50-goal scorer Phil Kessel.
The Ducks, Brian Burke's former team, found the demand for their supplementary players high -- Sami Pahlsson and Travis Moen, two-thirds of their once dominant checking line, found new homes in Chicago and San Jose, respectively, two teams with enough high-end talent to compete for a championship, even without making a major move. Pahlsson ends the Blackhawks' season-long search for a faceoff man; Moen helps fill the void on a third line, beset by injuries all season long.
Phoenix added a trio of younger players -- Matthew Lombardi from Calgary, Scott Upshall from Philadelphia and Nigel Dawes from the New York Rangers. The deals accomplish two things: They help the money-losing Coyotes chop payroll in a big way, and theoretically give them prospects in the right age group to mature along with their core of blue-chip talent: Peter Mueller, Martin Hanzal, Kyle Turris.
The Edmonton Oilers met their primary need for more scoring by adding Patrick O'Sullivan (in a complicated three-way deal with Carolina and Los Angeles) plus Ales Kotalik from the Buffalo Sabres, two players who may take some of the short-term scoring pressure off Sam Gagner and Andrew Cogliano.
The Pittsburgh Penguins, last year's Stanley Cup finalists, were the poster boys for the new approach to the deadline. A year ago, they mortgaged part of the future to acquire Marian Hossa. This year, a similar move was not in the cards, according to general manager Ray Shero, who added Bill Guerin yesterday to last week's move on the Ducks' Chris Kunitz, and did so without giving up a first- or a second-round pick. Together, he hopes that pair is enough to sneak his team into the playoffs and then scare a higher-seeded opponent once they get there.
Years ago, when Tampa won the 2004 Stanley Cup, the Lightning motto was Safe Is Death. Five years later, the only team willing to adhere to that philosophy was Calgary, the team that lost to them in that memorable seven-game series.
The risk is significant because the Flames were expected to win a playoff round anyway, as the Western Conference's likely third seed, even without a major overhaul at the deadline.
Leopold should be a seamless fit; he was Robyn Regehr's partner on the Flames' shutdown pair during their 2004 run to the Stanley Cup final.
The goal was to close the gap between them and the two powers in the West, San Jose and Detroit. Short-term, they may indeed be a better team on paper. It'll be up to coach Mike Keenan, who has a previous relationship with Jokinen dating back to their Florida days, to make sure that improvement spills over onto the ice, which, as we're reminded again and again, is where games are actually won and lost.
(Contact Eric Duhatschek at eduhatschek<at>globeandmail.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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