Bruins seem to have won Hamilton, Kessel deals
So this column is about three Canadian franchises, the dangers of dealing with the Boston Bruins, the multi-team legacy of Brian Burke and the importance of knowing where you are at any given time.
Which means this space couldn’t quite decide on the right topic this week. Sometimes small pieces can be more edible than one chunk, and be relieved that the original plan — which was to weave the Argonauts and that franchise’s uncertain future into this missive, as well — was mercifully abandoned after a bracing cup of morning coffee.
So the general topic is hockey. Where this written stream of consciousness began was a glance at the NHL standings, and particularly the fact the Calgary Flames were at the very bottom of the Western Conference looking up at 13 other teams heading into play Friday night.
The scoresheet from Thursday’s loss by the Flames in Tampa Bay revealed that defenceman Dougie Hamilton, the biggest salary-cap hit on the club, had played just under 18 minutes while four other Calgary blue-liners had played at least five minutes more. That’s how it’s been working for a while now for the jittery young star who was acquired from the Bruins at the June draft for a first-round pick and two seconds at a time when the Flames were still enjoying the high of a stunningly successful 2014-15 season.
Hamilton, 22, seemed the natural successor to Zdeno Chara. But new GM Don Sweeney reversed course and traded Hamilton to the grateful Flames, who couldn’t believe their luck in landing a “franchise” defenceman to go with Mark Giordano and T.J. Brodie, and gave Hamilton the $35 million (U.S.) the Bruins didn’t want to give him.
At this moment, with the Flames struggling terribly and Hamilton of very limited assistance in his first season in Alberta, this looks like a very iffy deal from a Calgary point of view. Were the Flames, a team that hasn’t won a playoff series since getting to the Stanley Cup final in 2004, really in a position last June to start trading away all those futures?
It was the second time in six years the Bruins appeared to be prematurely giving up on a blue-chip player in his early 20s, and it may be the second time they knew exactly the flaws in what they were giving up.
In September 2009 they packaged Phil Kessel, then two weeks shy of his 22nd birthday, to the Maple Leafs for two firsts and a second as Toronto tried to accelerate a rebuilding plan. It took until June 2015 for the Leafs to conclude that Kessel wasn’t a fit or a leader, that they’d paid a terrible price to get him and that he had to go. That was after they gave him a $64-million contract.
Right now, there are echoes of that Kessel experience in Calgary with Hamilton, with the added connection given that Burke was a senior executive with both clubs when those trades were made.
Perhaps the simple lesson is that when Boston comes calling with a flashy young player to offer in a trade, the best thing to do is hang up (unless you’re the Dallas Stars). Or, perhaps the more complex lesson is that the hardest thing to do running an NHL team is not to get ahead of yourself and understand exactly when, like Alex Anthopoulos and the Blue Jays did this season, the time is right to start going for it.
That time wasn’t in 2009 for the Leafs and Kessel, and at this very minute it looks like the Flames may have been getting ahead of themselves when they went after Hamilton last summer.
That said, this isn’t an exact science, and sometimes even understanding where you are may not allow you to do what needs to be done, which brings us to the Canucks, another franchise touched by Burke.
It was back in June 1999 when Burke, then GM of the ’Nucks, moved heaven and earth to make sure both Henrik and Daniel Sedin, the identical Swedish twins, landed on the Lower Mainland through the draft. It was a spectacular bit of deal-making by Burke, nearly as good as the deals he made to win a Cup in Anaheim in ’07, and the Sedins have been a blessing for the Canucks ever since.
Now, however, they’re blocking the Canucks from doing what they really need to do.
You can bet if you gave Trevor Linden truth serum, he’d tell you his organization really needs to be doing what the Leafs are doing, stripping it down and rebuilding with high-end young players in order to at least have the chance at being a serious contender in the next five to seven years.
History and cynicism suggests this plan will likely be derailed at some point in Toronto. What we do know is the Leafs got rid of the Kessel and David Clarkson contracts, and drafted a player in Mitch Marner who many GMs say could be the next Patrick Kane. Toronto could well end up with another top-five pick next June, or two picks in the top 25 (they own Pittsburgh’s first), and then we’ll see where it all goes.
Vancouver, in town Saturday, has promising young players in Bo Horvat, Jake Virtanen and Jared McCann. But they aren’t the new Sedins, and the twins still have two years left after this season. At a combined $14 million, they are inseparable and untradeable, and their remarkable reliability likely means the Canucks will be sniffing around the playoffs at least until they’re gone and likely won’t be drafting high enough to get truly special players.
So Linden and Jim Benning have to proceed down a slightly awkward path, unable to win but for now equally unable to seriously plan for winning down the road.
Having once traded a 22-year-old Cam Neely to Boston, Vancouver is a franchise that also knows the dangers of doing deals involving young stars with the Bruins, although in a reverse way.
Which sort of ties the Leafs, Flames and Canucks together, along with their employment of Burke.
If only he’d run the Argos at one time, we’d really have been on to something here. Damien Cox is a broadcaster with Rogers Sportsnet and a regular contributor to Hockey Night in Canada. He spent nearly 30 years covering a variety of sports for the Star, and his column appears here Saturdays. Follow him @DamoSpin.