HypeCentre/BlogCentre 2008

I'm not going to attempt to compete with JayCentre 2008 (in fact, I'll even link to it) but here's a few of my own real-time reactions to the day's goings-on:

1. Let's start with What I Was Wrong About: Brian Campbell was traded to San Jose, so a double-wammy since I said he wouldn't go anywhere and that Kubina would go there, which obviously won't happen now. Damn. Brad Richards, a Big Name goes to Dallas (with Holmquist for Mike Smith, Jussi Jokinen and Jeff Halpern. Initial reaction: Huh.). Vaclav Prospal WAS traded, which I correctly guessed but was really a foregone conclusion, but to the wrong team, Philly. So half wrong. Or half right?

2. Brian Campbell to San Jose means Darcy Regier goes after Joni Pitkanen this summer! Draft picks for the Oilers!

3. Cristobal Huet to Washington for a 2nd round pick. Wait. That's a terrible trade. Montreal has a real shot this year, the East is open, and they're going to trust Carey Price with that? Yeah, Price is maybe the best goaltending prospect in the NHL, but this a serious gamble. I thought Huet was playing well this year? Wasn't he?

4. So far I can say I was right about Sundin (nothing to brag about, this seemed really obvious too), Rob Blake and Alex Tanguay not waiving their no-trade clauses. Wrong about Campbell, soon to be wrong about Hossa if the reports are to be believed, but I'm still confident in Jokinen and Roloson staying put.

5. A very busy hour has just passed, is this enough for TSN to justify having, what, twelve people working at once? Plus Jay "working" from home on his blog?

6. According the current CBA, this is the breakdown for restricted free agent draft compensation, if a player's team chooses not to match another team's offer sheet:

$660,000 or below: None
Over $660,000 to $1 million: Third Round
Over $1 million to $2.0 million: Second Round
Over $2.0 million to $3.0 million: First Round and Third Round
Over $3.0 million to $4.0 million: First Round, Second Round, and Third
Round
Over $4.0 million to $5.0 million: Two First Rounds, Second Round, and
Third Round
Over $5 million: Four First Rounds

So that means Edmonton will get four first rounders from Buffalo if they offer more than $5 million, in contrast to what I wrote in my earlier post. And, given Buffalo's recent performance, I expect them to be excellent picks. Zing! Brian Burke would be proud.

I feel confident in saying that in the next few years, as the salary bar continues to rise, you'll see more offer sheets to, what, "lower-end" players (Is that what you call them?) rather than to the upper echelon. I now have the complete 472 page National Hockey League Collective Bargaining agreement on my desktop. Yes Mom but if I HAD become a lawyer, I wouldn't have time for this blog!

7. JayCentre is killing himself this year, he's been updating that page faster than a day trader. Do day traders reload their stock pages often or are they on the phone instead? Answer: they reload their pages because I'm not finding a new comparison and I'm no good at clever similes. I'm about as bad at clever similes as Glen Healy is at analyzing hockey. There. Not funny, but accurate.

8. I like the Chicago-Carolina Tuomo Ruutu for Andrew Ladd trade. Chicago gets Ladd, who might play hockey games once in a while, and Carolina gets Ruutu who, if he can stay healthy, still has a very good offensive upside. A good "hockey" trade, as they used to say.

9. Ottawa getting Lapointe does not mean they're out of the Marian Hossa rumors, just giving up a 6th round pick. Makes them tougher, something Ottawa will never be accused of over-valuing.

10. I agree with Jay, why is Darren Dutchy standing so close to Pierre MacGuire? Why would anyone need to stand so close to Pierre McGuire? They can hear him in the Sportsnet studios across the parking lot, maybe they should be paying part of his salary.

11. Matt Cooke to Washington? I remember that time when the Canucks were "good" and they had that big line of Naslund-Morrison-Bertuzzi but whenever they'd struggle, it was when Cooke was hurt. You'd hear the voices talk about Cooke being a "clutch" player, a "heart-and-soul guy," how he "provided MUCH NEEDED GRIT" (a phrase as overused as "puck-moving defenseman" and "depth forward," which really means "bad old player with a ring") and his absence being a real reason for the team's struggles. I always wondered how good a team really was if Matt Cooke was the difference between winning and losing. And I'm going to start using MUCH NEEDED GRIT in my daily life, as in "that new guy really did a good job cleaning my windshield. He adds some MUCH NEEDED GRIT to the 142 st Shell."

12. Still waiting on Hossa, Jokinen and, most importantly, Byron Ritchie. And other than the incomparable Wade Belak, the Leafs haven't done anything. Curious.

13. Pierre McGuire, I've said before, needs his own show without all the annoyances he has to put up with on TSN. Things like Other People, commercials, time constraints, these are the things that impede Pierre on his Quest For Truth.

14. Hossa to the Penguins! Wow! A monster deal! What an offense they're putting together. Giving up Angelo Esposito is fine, it's starting to look like like he's a pretty questionable prospect at this point. Erik Christensen and Colby Armstrong's numbers are inflated playing with Crosby and Malkin, I think, but we'll see. I like it for both teams because Atlanta gets at least two quality players, though perhaps not as good as they seemed, plus a wild-card prospect and a draft pick, unless TSN is still getting more information.

15. Hossa to Pittsburg = another bad guess by me.

16. The Leafs rebuild is in full swing. Hal Gill, Wade Belak and Chad Kilger are gone, leaving a huge leadership/skill/experience void. Hopefully young, cheap players like Mats Sundin, Pavel Kubina, Darcy Tucker, Brian McCabe and Tomas Kaberle will step up and really change the direction of this team.

Looks like that's all we have. Lots of disappointment I'm sure for the majority of Canadian teams: Toronto couldn't unload any of its logjam of overpaid underperformers, Montreal makes the oddest trade of the day and doesn't add anyone, Ottawa adds a good checker but, like Montreal, loses out on Hossa, Vancouver loses out on Richards and doesn't add any secondary scoring. Edmonton and Calgary stand pat, for differing reasons. Edmonton doesn't have any impending high value unrestricted free agents to auction off and no major salary cap blocks. Dwayne Roloson kept coming up as a result of the emergence of Mathieu Garon, but I would suggest, likely as a minority voice, that a goalie who has been inconsistant throughout his career ought to show he can perform as a number one goalie for more than, really, half a season. Since he's only been the Oilers' guy for that long, it's much better to hang on to a veteran sure-thing as insurance. The Flames have a really good team on paper so there's really no need, they just have to play as well as they have lately. Oh and, leave Tanguay alone. Please. It might help him play better if you stop asking him if he'll still be on the team by the deadline.

Otherwise, despite all the changes, you have to say that the balance of power has only shifted in the East and only in Pittsburg, since Washington's moves were good, if maginal. Despite Richards to Dallas and Campbell to San Jose, those teams are frankly still playing catchup to Anaheim. The Ducks have a tremendous defense, a pretty good goalie who looks a lot better as a result, big skilled forwards, lots of depth, they're tough, experienced, and will be good for at least the next few years. I'd like to see San Jose have a good run and knock off Anaheim but Anaheim really is the class of the West and the NHL as a whole, despite Detroit's great season and the deadlines deals by the Sharks and Stars. That's a tough division, isn't it? And Phoenix is a pretty good team too, no wonder the poor Kings are last overall.

So, an intertaining morning. Even the players you knew would probably go, like Hossa and Campbell, there's still the suspense and surprise that comes with finding out where they'll end up. Did it live up to the hype? If Wayne Gretzky came out of retirement, was involved in a three-way trade with Hossa and Campbell that freed up cap space to acquire Ken Holland to be the Leafs GM, who then hired Toe Blake who traded for John Tavaras who cured cancer, the hype STILL would have been overblown. I love how Duthie handles this, simultaneously mocking and facilitating it at the same time. A deft hosting touch, that one. I have to say that I mostly stuck with TSN all day because I like Jay's blog and I want to know what he's talking about. They also have SO many people working there too that I figure, you know, a million monkeys on a million teleprompters...

See you next year, where hopefully I'll be blogging from a corner office overlooking English Bay.


17. I hate fantasy sports. For one thing, you can't trade somebody for MUCH NEEDED GRIT.