Back to Business

The NHL is back in action tonight, but first, a quick round-up of the rest of the men's Olympic tournament:

-Gold for Sweden, and good for them. Seriously. The #2-ranked hockey nation in 2005, they'd endured an awful lot of disappointment since Lillehammer. As for whether they threw the game against the Slovaks, a coach telling the media that he might like his team to lose, doesn't mean that his players are going to go out and lose. They have their pride to consider, and on an international stage like the Olympics, is a group of professionals really going to pull a stunt like that? You can bet head coach Bengt-Ake Gustafsson is breathing a little easier now, too; that gold medal might just have saved his job. It should also help a few of the NHLers - especially Mats Sundin, who was suffering a crisis of confidence - in playing hard down the stretch.

-The Finns are about as bitter a silver-medal-winning squad as you're ever likely to see. And that's okay. Not everybody comes to the Olympics just to do well; these guys play to win. Too bad that mindset would be lost on Jaromir Jagr, who told reporters that this would likely be the last Olympics of many of the Czech Republic players, including himself. "We're not going to play for our country. It's so much pressure. We lose, and they blame us. They blame the old guys again." Makes you wonder what he's doing in professional sports at all, really.


Back to the NHL, though, there's only about a third of the season left to play, and the races for the last playoff spots are wide open. The trade deadline also hits on March 9, just over a week away, so look for quite a bit of swapping to be going on, as big names rumoured to be available are Olli Jokinen, Keith Tkachuk, Mark Recchi, and Brendan Witt; many goalies are also expected to move, a list that includes Sabre Martin Biron, Panther Roberto Luongo, and one of the Wild's Dwayne Roloson or Manny Fernandez.

Teams on the playoff bubble will be waiting until the last minute to decide whether to buy or sell, and one of those teams will be the Toronto Maple Leafs. In truth - and it pains me to say this - it wouldn't be the worst thing for the club if they were to miss the playoffs. A lot of salary would move in an attempt to rebuild, as players like Ed Belfour and Nik Antropov would likely be bidden farewell. Though it might not be the free agent-rich summer that GM John Ferguson Jr. was hoping for prior to Vincent Lecavalier and Joe Thornton signing new contracts in the fall, there will still be some big names available, and with smart spending, the Leafs could be serious contenders again next year.

Also, in one of the more bizarre things I've heard recently, CBS Sportsline is reporting that the Penguins are apparently trying to start a league-wide bidding war for young Russian Evgeni Malkin, who is expected to move to the NHL next season. I'm not sure what the sense in this would be, if the rumour is even true (CBS tends to find trade rumours in their Alpha-Bits, and similarly, in Sun Media newspapers); they would be selling off their potentially lethal one-two punch in Crosby and Malkin, and for what? There is nothing that would be more valuable to Pittsburgh than two young franchise players-to-be. Scoring or defence right now wouldn't help them, they have a young goalie in Marc-Andre Fleury that they're trying to develop, and they certainly don't need high draft picks - they've got the market cornered there. (Never mind that the idea of trading a can't-miss prospect for draft picks makes no sense whatsoever.) Even from the ownership's standpoint, there'd be no upside to any such deal; it makes the team more likely to be moved, as fans lose interest even more, and it makes the selling price much lower. Granted, if Malkin was somehow dealt in a multi-team trade for several young stars-to-be, the Penguins wouldn't be terribly off; since they have so many high draft picks, however, it would be much more advisable to focus on scouting and developing other prospects, to build a team that would be a powerhouse in a few years' time.