It’s trade deadline day tomorrow and I’ll try to get something up on this site that covers all thats going on. I’ll be in work for the day and while I’ll have the radio on or the stream from Sportsnet or TSN, I won’t be able to update the site with the trades going on. I will do a little bit of Tweeting throughout the day and those updates will appear here and, as always, on the right hand sidebar.

What to expect?

Well the past few years have been real duds. The TV networks tune in for blanket coverage for the entire day until the 3 p.m. deadline and then a few hours of analysis afterwards but these past couple of seasons there has been a lack of dramatic trades and far from a large number of trades. The networks want to see a bunch of trades spread over the entire day so they have something to talk about, but more often than not the majority of trades go through at the last minute.

Tomorrow could be different though. There are quite a few teams who are going to be sellers, looking to rid themselves of contracts in return for draft picks or prospects in order to re-build their teams. On the flip side there are more teams than ever in the race for the playoffs still and with more games than usual still left at this time of the year (thanks to the Olympic break) so many teams will be looking to add to their teams. Expect a busy day tomorrow.

Toronto for what its worth are very much sellers and GM Brian Burke has said they will definitely be in for deals. Toronto already got rid of a third of their roster a month ago when they shipped out the likes of Toskala, Blake, Stajan, Hagman and White for the likes of Dion Phaneuf and JS Giguere. Almost nobody is safe in Toronto and it’ll be interesting to see what they decide to do and then see the fans and media analyze it. At the time of writing there were stiff rumors that the Leafs have already made a deadline move involving winger Alexi Ponikarovsky who until now has spent his entire career with the Leafs but who could be a tasty piece for a contender to add. The rumor suggests he is off to Pittsburgh in return for veteran blue liner Martin Skoula and prospect Luca Caputi.

We’ll see if that goes through and what else goes on between now and 3 p.m. tomorrow and then sit down and try and analyze it all. Enjoy it, get sucked in by it and perhaps get disappointed by it when the big deals you wanted to go through fail to go through.

I am not Brian Burke’s biggest fan, but you have to admire him for not sitting on a bad thing and admire him for being very aggressive in trying to tackle the problem that is the modern day Toronto Maple Leafs. Burke has threatened changes from the get-go but as time went on the threats to send veterans to the minors and make trades appeared to be looking like idle threats until Sunday when Burke pulled the pin on a grenade and lobbed it into the Leafs dressing room blowing it to pieces.

By the time the dust settled a staggering 30% of the teams line-up had gone and three good players plus a prospect had come back in. Tonight they will take to the line-up for the first time and everyone will anxiously tune in to see what happens.

I don’t expect a miracle, I certainly don’t expect the Leafs to soar up the standings but something had to change and overall, while losing Ian White isn’t easy (he’s having a better year than Phaneuf), the Leafs have improved to a degree. I say degree because they are now left desperately short in the forward position but can now look at young players and see what forward positions they need to address in the off season. Actually, Burke said he isn’t done trading some some of those positions could yet be finished by trading out some defensemen, a position the Leafs can trim down on.

If only Liverpool, my beloved Liverpool Football Club, could address their own problems and lack of talent un-worty of wearing the Red shirt in a similar way to the Leafs. To many times this season I have watched them fall well short of standards and wished Benitez had the guts to ditch 30% of the line-up. Sure we haven’t the money to buy but we could certainly sell and buy in replacements, perhaps even give some younger players a run out who actually want to be there. But then, that’s a rant for another day.

It’s been a long old hockey season for those that like their trades … Until today. I was sitting watching TV this morning when someone pointed out to me the names of some Leafs players on the news ticker and that it looked like there had been a trade. I turned on the net and was indeed informed of the blockbuster deal that had taken place between Toronto and Calgary and later Toronto and Anaheim.

The trades:

Toronto acquire defensemen Dion Phaneuf and Keith Aulie along with forward Fredrik Sjostrom from the Calgary Flames in return for forwards Jason Blake, Niklas Hagman, Jamal Mayers and defenseman Ian White.

Toronto acquire goalie Jean-Sebastien Giguere from Anaheim Ducks in return for goalie Vesa Toskala and forward Jason Blake.

Thoughts:

Well the Toronto media have proclaimed their city the winner of this deal before a shot is fired in anger by any of these players at their new teams simply because Phaneuf is the biggest name in the deal. They have a point to a degree, the Leafs gave up some players on big salaries who were not producing as much as they might have liked and with the team sitting at the bottom end of the standings and losing on a nightly basis, it makes sense to make changes going forward. Losing a bunch of forwards frees up space for the Leafs to give young players a shot to prove their worth for the rest of the season and getting back a young star like Phaneuf never hurts.

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It has been a rough season for everyone involved with the Philadelphia Flyers. Expectations were high coming into the season and they were expected to challenge for a cup. The first half dozen games or so went swimmingly but suddenly the wheels came off. They started losing – a lot, the coach was fired, the fans got frustrated, there was talk of players partying more than playing and rifts within the dressing room. It seemed the team were going to completely blow the season. Then came the Christmas period and New Year.

They won four in-a-row over Christmas to end December and their captain, Mike Richards who has been struggling at times through the season, got named to the Canadian Olympic team and started to pick up his game.

A late comeback by Boston against the Flyers at the Winter Classic game on New Years day at Fenway Park and another loss a few days later against Ottawa had some worrying that they were reverting back to poor form, but the team showed heart, grit and fight against the Leafs on Wednesday night and then again last night against rivals and cup holders, Pittsburgh, last night.

The game against the Leafs was live on TV here and was incredibly the two teams first meeting of the season and after the game I cannot wait for the rest. The Flyers played tough and they played well. They scored some pretty goals (especially via enforcer/agitator Dan Carcillo) and they stirred it up and dropped the gloves (especially via enforcer/agitator Dan Carcillo). There was eight goals in the game (6-2 Flyers) and four fights and the longer the game went on the closer you felt it was going to get to breaking out into an all out brawl. I’ll have to put some cash aside for the first Flyers game in Toronto this season and try get myself down to the ACC.

Last night beating Pittsburgh though was perhaps even more important. Toronto are a struggling team, while Pittsburgh who are also struggling are a team expected to turn it around and compete for the cup.

I sense a corner is being turned by the Flyers these last two games and with the win against Pittsburgh I am more confident now than I have been in months that they can build on the result and put together a proper run of form that will pull them back into a playoff spot. Let’s face it, the talent on the team says cup contender, so something was wrong that had them so far down the standings, but whatever it is, I think new coach Peter Laviolette is sorting it out and the players are finally buying into his system and bouncing back.

The Toronto Maple Leafs started the season in an awful way, they then bounced back so much so that they were just a point out of a playoff spot at one point, but the Christmas period and right into the New Year has not been kind, they have reverted back to their losing ways and slipped back down the standings to 14th place in the East.

The dip in form is taking its toll on the players but also the coach as Ron Wilson, never one to be too kind with the media – he always seems like he talks to them because ownership tells him he has to – cracked up when asked about the ‘hairdryer’ treatment he gave to sniper Phil Kessel. Wilson got angry that the media were allowed at practices but went on to say that Kessel had been playing poor.

I don’t know about you – everyone is different when it comes to things like this – but I’m not sure it’s ever a wise move to sound off on a poor playing player in public. It’s that “Don’t air your dirty linen in public” saying that springs to mind.

But then you can understand Wilson’s frustration. Kessel who came to Toronto with much hype has one goal in ten games and is slumping badly, along with the rest of his teams. I just thing it would be better for the team as a whole if he criticised them as a group publicly and left the singling out stuff to the dressing room.

Well since the coaching change that I didn’t think was quite necessary, the Philadelphia Flyers are now 0-2 making it zero wins in their past five games and eight defeats out of nine. That isn’t meant to be seen as a shot at new coach Peter Laviolette, who clearly has his work cut out for him, but rather a statement that the Flyers problems might have ran deeper than their now ex-coach John Stevens. What that problem is, I am not too sure, but the Flyers had dam well better pick up their play or risk falling far behind in the playoff race. After a pretty solid start to the season the Flyers, who many expected to compete with the Capitals and Penguins for the conference title, have fallen 3 points out of the playoff spot and while that doesn’t seem much it is quick to lose ground. Thankfully for the Flyers there appears to be a lot of parity around the league this year with everyone able to beat anyone else on any given night and it has kept the standings very close from top to bottom. Considering the abuse I have given the Leafs over the first portion of the season and their brutal start to the year, they now sit just 2 points back on the Flyers and appear to be going in the opposition direction.

Jonas Gustavsson arrived in Toronto as the great Swedish hope. The fans were on the verge of giving up on Toskala (and it only took a few games before they officially did give up) and were ready to throw all their weight and pressure behind the young rookie. It seemed like a lot for one man to take and while many neutral observers felt the kid, while talented, might stuffer in the Toronto spotlight but nobody expected it to be heart problems that blew up his early season good form. The Monster as he is known has made an excellent start to his NHL career but before that career had even began he pulled out of training camp in order to have minor heart surgery to fix an irregular heartbeat and then last night disaster struck after the first period when Gustavsson left for the hospital with the heart problem flaring up again.

Then today it was revealed the goalie will have to undergo another procedure to correct the irregular heart beat just like the previous one putting him out of the line-up for an unknown period of time. It’s a terrible scenario for the kid but one that will concern the Leafs and their fans. Not just for his healthy, but whether this might be an ongoing career problem that will need many hospital visits throughout seasons. It is a hole the Leafs didn’t need to be tossed into given they are still trying to climb out of another that has them in the bottom places of the Eastern Conference. Couple that with the fact that Toskala, the unofficial starter on the team, is also out injured and the struggling Leafs will have to go with two AHL goalies for the foreseeable future. Expect the trade talks to pick up…