The Trouble With Trades

The Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers made a flurry of deals on March 9 in an effort to solidify their respective lineups for a long post-season run. Vancouver went out and got defencemen Eric Weinrich, Keith Carney, and Sean Brown, as well as goalie Mika Noronen to back up Alex Auld. In the short term, the three blueliners were supposed to fill in for injured rearguards Ed Jovanovski, Sami Salo and Mattias Ohlund. And guess what? Since the deadline, the Canucks are 0-2, and winless in their last four games.

The Oilers, picked up Dwayne Roloson to be their number one netminder, as well as sniper Sergei Samsonov. The Oil also have four losses in as many games, with Roloson taking the loss in three of them.

Calgary, meanwhile, only picked up centre Jamie Lundmark - much to the chagrin of the "experts" on TSN and Sportsnet - yet stormed back into first place in the Northwest Division, while the Canucks and Oilers slid down to seventh and eighth.

Am I suggesting that these trends are going to continue? Of course not; I still expect (and hope) that all three teams will make the playoffs. But I do find a little bit of irony in the fact that two of the teams thought to have done the best at the deadline are winless since then.



Also last Thursday, Carolina made one more slick move to prepare for a run at the Cup by acquiring Mark Recchi from the Pittsburgh Penguins. They're looking more and more formidable by the day, and have a good mix of youth and experience that could take them all the way to the top; add the fact that they're one of the league's fastest teams, and you've got yourself a juggernaut.

Of course, if you're one of those people who listens to what Al Strachan says - you're in my prayers, by the way - then you'll be interested to learn that he believes the Hurricanes have absolutely no shot whatsoever at winning the Stanley Cup. He told the Sportsnet panel that they simply don't have the experience necessary to win it; it's not that they're unlikely to win, it's that they absolutely won't. Now, I'm not going to be so stupid as to guarantee that they win it, but how can you count out this team? That's right, you can't. Sure, his arguments might hold water - there's a lot of pressure on the 1st-overall team, Gerber isn't really playoff-tested, blah blah blah. But do these things completely guarantee that they won't win it all? Of course not. This claim of Strachan's might have been a little easier to take if he hadn't presented it as though anyone who disagreed was a complete moron - the same way he makes most of his claims on Hockey Night in Canada's "Satellite Hot Stove" discussions. Any time the other men on the panel would approach the subject of Carolina's playoff chances, he would sneeringly refer to them as "your beloved Hurricanes." Maybe he's getting ready for a career in politics.



Finally, Daniel Alfredsson on the rookie race:

"I just think (Ovechkin has) everything you could want. He's a great skater, he's a great stickhandler, good one-on-one and he's got a really good work ethic. He doesn't get frustrated if he gets hit, either. He gets up and keeps playing. Not like the other rookie (Crosby), who starts crying. I think there's a big difference in the attitude."

I guess ol' Daniel didn't watch the World Juniors last year, when Alex Ovechkin was in tears after getting thumped around by Team Canada (including Crosby, who even laid a hit on the Russian) en route to a 6-1 Canadian victory. Let's also keep in mind that Ovechkin is playing for a team that wasn't supposed to do anything this year; they were expected to come across the line dead last, so there isn't much pressure on the big Russian. Meanwhile, Crosby's Penguins were expected to be a playoff team - they were predicted to come sixth by The Hockey News prior to the season - and they've done nothing more than stink out the Mellon Arena. His friend, mentor and landlord, Mario Lemieux, also retired mid-season, putting even more pressure on the kid from Cole Harbour, who was given an "A" on his sweater by new head coach Michel Therrien. And really, who can blame Crosby for getting frustrated? He's a target every game, he's taunted both in the media and on the ice, and he's only 18 years old; on the other hand, the 20-year-old Ovechkin played in the Russian SuperLeague before coming over to the Capitals, so he's got much more experience playing against grown men.

I'm not slighting Ovechkin's accomplishments, because he's an excellent hockey player, but all these people who criticized all the hype heaped on Crosby also seem to have bought into it, since they apparently expect him to not just live up to it, but surpass it; the second he doesn't, he becomes a "crybaby" and a "whiner," and never mind his 74 points in 64 games (good for 10th place in league scoring) - that's just an inconvenient statistic.