NHL’S CONTENDERS STEP UP AT BUSY TRADE DEADLINE
The road to the Stanley Cup is going through Tampa Bay.
Or is it Winnipeg ? Or Pittsburgh? Or Las Vegas, Boston or Nashville? Or maybe it’s San Jose?
It’s tough to say after the significant improvements the NHL’s top contenders made before Monday’s NHL trade deadline. Most teams in contention got better. Almost every player rumoured to be on the move is wearing a different jersey today.
While Erik Karlsson remains an Ottawa Senator and Max Pacioretty will finish the season as the captain of the Montreal Canadiens, this was one of the busier trade deadlines in terms of impact. There were 16 trades involving 31 players and 18 draft picks. Some were short-term rentals. Some deals included players who had years remaining on their contracts. Some, like St. Louis trading Paul Stastny and Chicago parting with Ryan Hartman, were surprises.
It was hard to find a team that wasn’t going for it. General managers parted with first-round picks like Oprah Winfrey giving out automobiles. Almost every team got one.
With six weeks to go to the playoffs, the balance of power hasn’t really shifted. If anything, the gap between the contenders and the pretenders has widened.
Tampa Bay, which made the biggest splash in trading for Ryan McDonagh and J.T. Miller, still looks like the team to beat. But the first-place Lightning were always the team to beat regardless of what they did or did not do on Monday. Getting McDonagh and Miller puts them in good position — for this season and next considering neither is a rental player.
The Washington Capitals reportedly “won” last year’s trade deadline when they acquired defenceman Kevin Shattenkirk. But at the end of the playoffs, it was Pittsburgh hoisting its second straight Cup after picking up depth defenceman Ron Hainsey for a second-round pick and a minor-league prospect.
That’s usually the way it goes at this time of year. It’s the little trades that tend to have the biggest impacts. Justin Schultz was proof of that in 2016, as were Antoine Vermette in 2015, Marian Gaborik in 2014 and Michal Handzus in 2013.
If that’s the case, maybe Toronto’s acquisition of depth centre Tomas Plekanec turns out to be the steal of the year. Or perhaps Dallas and Philadelphia made the right moves in doing absolutely nothing on Monday.
Then again, it’s hard to give a failing grade to the teams that mortgaged their future and tried to buy a ticket to the Stanley Cup final.
The Penguins set the tone days before the deadline when they acquired Derick Brassard to give them the best centre corps in the NHL. The Bruins then addressed their need for secondary scoring by trading for Rick Nash and Tommy Wingels. From there, it was like watching a high-stakes poker game, with each team raising the ante.
San Jose rolled the dice on Evander Kane, giving up two picks, including a conditional 2019 first-round selection, and a prospect.
Nashville pried 23-year-old Ryan Hartman out of Chicago and a fifth-round pick for a king ’s ransom — sending back forward Victor Ejdsell, a first-round pick and a fourth-round pick.
Vegas, playing with house money all year, pushed in its chips and gave Detroit their 2018 first-round pick, a 2019 secondround pick that originally belonged to the New York Islanders and Vegas’ 2021 third-round pick for underachieving winger Tomas Tatar.
Even Winnipeg, which in the past has hit the snooze button on trade deadline day, decided to go all-in and give up forward Erik Foley and two draft picks for Stastny, a 32-year-old rental player with 12 goals this season in 63 games. But he is a six-time 20-goal scorer.
So who put themselves in the best position to win the Cup? Well, practically everyone.
From the East, it’s hard not to like Tampa Bay. The team was already filled with all-stars including Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos, Brayden Point, Victor Hedman and goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy. And while they didn’t land Karlsson, acquiring McDonagh and Miller might make even more sense.
It didn’t come cheap. The Lightning parted with forward Vladislav Namestnikov, a couple of top-end prospects in Brett Howden and Libor Hajek, as well as a first-round pick and a conditional second-round pick. But McDonagh gives the Lightning a top-four defence corps that rivals Nashville’s as the best in the NHL, while Miller, a winger, could become a better two-way fit than the one-dimensional Namestnikov.
In the West, things are more wide open with only three points separating the top three teams.
At the same time, Winnipeg sent a pretty big statement that it plans on avoiding another firstround sweep with the acquisition of Stastny.
Giving up a first-round pick and more for another top-six forward might have seemed unnecessary for a team that already has Blake Wheeler (72 points), Patrik Laine (51), Mark Scheifele (49), Nikolaj Ehlers (46) and Kyle Connor (40). But excess was the name of the game at this year’s deadline.
The again, don’t sleep on Toronto and Dallas. They didn’t do much. Of course, you don’t always have to in order to win a Cup.