NHL Trade Deadline

I want to talk about the trade deadline in the National Hockey League that is now only a few hours away. However, it seems that all of the major fireworks surrounding this have already gone off. For starters, let's look at the supposed fire sale that the Calgary Flames had back in late January/early February. First, they trade defenseman Dion Phaneuf to the Toronto Maple Leafs (along with a couple of other players) and in return, get what can be best described as (three) role players and a prospect. Granted, Phaneuf was underachieving the last two years and essentially forced his way out of Calgary with his play, but there is always the risk that he could rediscover his game in Toronto or anywhere else he may end up (Remember Patrick Roy back in 1996?). A few days later, they trade yet another underachiever in center Olli Jokinen along with pesky winger Brandon Prust to the New York Rangers for wingers Ales Kotalik and Christopher Higgins, guys who also underachieved. I think Jokinen was on the downside of his career, which may sound unfair given that he's still relatively young enough to produce good numbers, but the real loss for the Flames was Prust, who was an energy guy that could drop the gloves when needed.

The real fireworks, though, happened in Atlanta, where it was widely talked about what would happen to superstar forward Ilya Kovalchuk. On February 6, he ended up getting traded to the New Jersey Devils along with another player in exchange for a defenseman and a couple of prospects (read: a song and a dance). I talked about this trade earlier, so I won't go into details, other than to say that even if Kovalchuk is nothing more than a rental to the Devils, they didn't lose much in the deal.

So, as the deadline approaches, it is now just a matter of teams who are in line for playoff spots to really just tweak their rosters and acquire the potential missing pieces for the run to the Stanley Cup.