Rich get richer
The NHL’s 1% used the NHL trade deadline to put more distance between them and the also-rans
The road to the Stanley Cup is going through Tampa.
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 3 p.m. ET trade deadline. Every contending team got better. Almost every player that was 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 sheer impact. There was a total of 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’ Paul Stastny and Chicago’s Ryan Hartman, were complete surprises.
It was hard to find a team that wasn’t going for it. General managers parted with firstround 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 always was the frontrunner regardless of what did or did not occur on Monday. All getting McDonagh and Miller did was put the Bolts over the edge — for this year and next, considering neither was a rental player.
Yet, this isn’t the NBA. “Stanley Cup favourite” is a plural — not singular — term.
The Washington Capitals “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 fourthline 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.
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 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 and every team upping the ante.
It was about keeping up with the Joneses — or Rutherfords and Yzermans.
San Jose rolled the dice on Evander Kane, who cost them practically nothing, and Nashville pried 23-year-old Ryan Hartman out of Chicago for a king’s ransom. Vegas, which had been playing with house money all year, pushed in its chips and gave up first-, second- and third-round picks for underachieving Detroit winger Tomas Tatar.
Even Winnipeg, which in the past has hit the snooze button on this day, decided to go all-in and give up a first-round pick and more for a 32-year-old rental player with 12 goals this season.
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, the duo of McDonagh and Miller might make even more sense.
It didn’t come cheaply. 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 secondround pick. But McDonagh gives the Lightning a top-four defence corps that rivals Nashville’s as the best in the NHL, while Miller could end up becoming a better two-way fit than the one-dimensional Namestnikov.
In the West, things are a bit more wide open with only three points separating the top three teams entering last night’s play.
At the same time, Winnipeg
sent a pretty big statement that it plans on avoiding another first-round 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.
Them 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.