NHL’S big day a sleeper
Never before has so much been made about so little by so many.
Even by historically meagre NHL trade-deadline day standards, Monday was a decidedly limp affair.
And all the TV panels, the flurry of familiar faces hunched purposefully over glowing laptops and whispering into state-of-the-art iphones to give the illusion of impending seismic shocks, couldn’t provide a pulse.
Talk about putting the dead in deadline.
For the avalanche of preevent hype, layers of analysis and breathless speculation, you’d figure, at the very least, that Nixon had just resigned or the Hindenburg had exploded against the mooring mast in Lakehurst, N.J.
From 6 a.m. MST onward. Eight-plus hours that moved more glacially than Hall Gill snowshoeing back to touch first on an icing call.
And we get sucked in every year. That’s on us.
Andrei Kostitsyn for a second-round pick and a conditional in 2013? Former Calgary Flames prospect Keith Aulie for Carter Ashton, Brent’s offspring? Matt Gilroy for Brian Lee? Be still thy quaking heart. It’s a mystery worthy of Agatha Christie or Dick Francis why CNN didn’t interrupt Anderson Cooper for a bulletin on that Mike Commodore-for-a-conditional-seventh-rounder power-shifter. Really, inquiring minds want to know!
Rick Nash stayed put until the summer. The abrasive-as-pink-asbestos Steve Ott, too. The “big” names to move were Nick Schultz, TJ Galiardi, Tom Gilbert and Sammi Pahlsson. So, define “big,” please.
“I appreciate that this is, what? a bigger day than Christmas,’’ gently mocked Calgary Flames GM Jay Feaster during his posttrade-deadline availability.
“That’s what I understand. In Canada, it’s a made-for-television event. The be-all, end-all.’’
Feaster’s Flames, as widely predicted (even by the general manager himself), did their part to contribute to the broad-based snoozing. Meaning complete silence, except to re-sign a straightup, hard-working, one-goal winger — Tim Jackman — to a two-year extension worth $612,000-plus per season.
Why the total absence of Calgary activity? Well, outside of a leaguewide hesitancy to swing deals due to cap issues, tightness of the standings, etc., handing out no-trade clauses like sugar-coated samples at the launch of a neighbourhood sweets-shop makes moving players extremely tricky.
Pulling both Miikka Kiprusoff and Jarome Iginla off the table, frankly, doesn’t leave a lot lying around that anyone might be swooning over (if Paul Gaustad netted a first-round pick for Buffalo, just imagine the myriad of delights — in the form of prospects and/or picks — that contenders the calibre of Philly or San Jose or Chicago might’ve mortgaged to shore up glaring goal tending deficiencies).
But Kiprusoff has been deemed absolutely indispensable and Iginla, as has been repeated often, is destined to end his career, whenever that may be, as a Flame. So . . . “The decision was made, to the extent that we could pick up pieces that’d help us, we’d do that,’’ said Feaster. “But we weren’t prepared to overpay for those pieces. We decided we weren’t going to be sellers, that we weren’t going to bust this up.
“We were in on a number of things today that if the price had been right, if it had been something we were prepared to give up to get a player, we would’ve.
“We worked it hard. We worked it right on through almost to 1 o’clock our time.’’
Feaster hinted some conversations might be picked up in the off-season. When the team has a whack of money off the books.
In an effort to inflate hope for this final playoff push, he continued to talk up the Mike Cammalleri and Blair Jones trades, plucking Blake Comeau off of waivers and touting the imminent return of David Moss to active duty. Persuasive, to a degree, but hardly enough to reassure the doubting masses.
Because for all the spin-doctoring, the Flames, three points adrift and holding down 11th place prior to puck drop against the Blues, remain a franchise stuck in a deep malaise, groping in the dark for a definitive direction. Still treading water, in the long-odds hope of at last surrounding their two aging stars with the ideal insulation before they’re finally eligible for NHL old age pension.
They didn’t do anything Monday because, as long as Iginla and, most significantly Kiprusoff are untouchable, there simply isn’t much of any significance to be done.
A minor touch-up here, maybe. A quiet tweak there, perhaps. Nothing, certainly, that could’ve lifted them out of the morass of mediocrity presently tussling for the last morsel on the table, the eighth and final playoff spot in the West. Which is the most they can logically target this season, and the way things shape up, for the foreseeable future.
“We like our team,’’ declared Feaster (only days after admitting they’d be slumming with Columbus if not for No. 34). “As we approach the last 20-21 games, again, we like this group. We think the answers are still in that room.’’
So from here to April 7 and the regular-season curtain-dropper in Anaheim, what you’ve seen is what you get.
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