Trades, coaching changes, draft talk, retirement of a legend, CBA news and other rumors. Not quite your average week in the NHL. Still, this week can be busy what with the draft just a few days away and teams looking to sort out their rosters ahead of both the draft and the pending free agency season. Today though seemed like one story after another. I know I’ve been in World Cup lockdown but I do keep an eye on NHL goings on and it’s been pretty quiet of late – if you discount the news that the Boston Bruins will play the Belfast Giants in an exhibition game next October – until today when Twitter got very busy with news stories being reported all over the place. So what was the biggest story of the day? I’d have to go with the Hall of Fame selections – at the very least that was the news story that got the anger of many NHL fans, writers and tweeters.

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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.

Now I wasn’t expecting that one. New Jersey were not one of the teams a lot of the rumor mongering types were putting on their shortlist of team that would trade for Kovalchuk but last night good ‘ol Lou Lamarello came up with the goods to grab one of the games top snipers. The Devils are defensive first team and have been for years, but they once traded for Russian Alex Mogilny a number of years back and he won a cup with them so no reason this cannot work again by getting Kovalchuk.

To get Kovalchuk the Devils parted with John Oduya, Nic Bergfors, prospect Patrice Cormier (the kid suspended for the rest of the year in the QMJHL for a dirty elbow just a few weeks ago) and a 1st round draft pick.

While the Devils were already a contender, this really puts them in a good position to go all the way. Whether he stays on there past this season remains to be seen but I think this is worth the risk by NJ.

For what its worth, Kovalchuk never really meant what he said by saying he wanted to stay in Atlanta if the deal was right, he supposedly turned down a 12 year $101-million contract and if you turn that down either your incredibly greedy or you never wanted to stay at all … I think its the later because he may be greedy but he isn’t stupid and he’ll do well to better 12 years at $101-million anywhere in the summer. Kovalchuk clearly wanted to save face with the fans and didn’t want to come out and verbally say that he wanted to leave.

I think Atlanta were hoping for more but when a player this good is only potentially going to be a short term rental there is only so much a team will pay. If he’d been upfront with them earlier in the year they could have got more for him earlier in the season, perhaps even late last year when they’d have got a ton in return.

Teams need to learn that if you take your stars into the final year of their contracts without a renewal you run the serious risk of losing them for little return. I don’t know what some GM’s think but if it were me I’d be making sure to lock up my stars at least 15 months prior to their contract expiring and if I couldn’t then I’d look to deal early when I could get maximum return.

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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Here we go, tons of hockey news to be coming forth today and boy do the hockey fans need it after quite an uneventful draft day last week. Today is one of them big days in the NHL calendar that doesn’t include any hockey actually being played — other such days include the Trade Deadline and the Draft. It’s 1 July and that means Free Agency Opens.

The players out of contract officially became eligible to sign for whatever team offers them a contract at 12 p.m. today so we are about 39 minutes into free agency as we speak and already a few moves are being made. There is also some steep rumors of trades of players under contract being made as team try to free up cap room to sign the potential free agent that attracts them.

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When I typed in the title above my spell checker highlighted the word ‘Pronger’, but when I clicked on it instead of hitting ignore, I hit ‘learn’ because in the coming year or so with Chris Pronger now a Philadelphia Flyers player I believe I’ll be writing quite a bit about him and I don’t want red lines all over my articles before I hit submit.

Last night during the NHL Entry Draft the Flyers made a big splash by giving up their pick late in the first round, their first round pick next year and two young players for veteran defenseman Chris Pronger. Why should I be so interested other than the fact that my team have picked up a marquee player who, even at 35, can still make a difference to the point that he could be the missing cog in a Stanley Cup challenge?

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