The past week in the NHL was very busy with GMs beginning to deal their players to make a playoff push, as well as an extremely odd increase in fighting, especially amongst goalies. The week ended with CBC hosting Hockey Day in Canada from Whitehorse Yukon Territories. I have many interesting theories about what the outcome of this weeks events in the NHL will be an I will do my best to share them with you now.
Brian Burke, the GM of the Toronto Maple Leafs broke the ice for the big trade period known as February by dealing defensman Francois Beauchemin to his former team the Anaheim Ducks for sniper Joffery Lupal, a prospect defensman and a conditional draft pick in 2012. This deal is good for both sides as the Ducks have spent the whole season being a little thin on defense, but they still find themselves in the hunt for a playoff spot, so Beauchemin will be a very helpful asset. The Leafs acquire Lupal who can score goals but wasn't getting enough ice time for the Ducks as well as another young prospect to help with their rebuilding effort. I think this trade was good for both teams and I expect Burke to move more players from the Leafs before the deadline.
The second biggest trade of the week involved another falling Canadian team, the Ottawa Senators. They dealt fan favourite centre Mike Fisher to the Nashville Predators for a first round pick and a conditional 2012 pick. Fisher joins his wife Carrie Underwood in Nashville and also joins a lower market team that now is showing they actually want to make a run for the cup. This move appeared to catch many TV analysis off guard as Nashville is not usually a team many people pick to make a playoff run, but they are out to prove them wrong. After seeing Nashville play and beat the talented Detroit Red Wings before acquiring a first line centre, the Preds defiantly seem to have the pieces to make a run. And Ottawa officially threw in the towel on this terrible season by trading one of their top players for draft picks. It is strange to see how bad Ottawa has played considering their only big change from last year was signing Sergei Gonchar but that did not seem to help them this season.
One of the strangest things that happened in the NHL was the large increase of fighting and goalie fights. In two seperate incidents, one between the Montreal Canadians and the Boston Bruins and the other between the New York Islanders and the Pittsburgh Penguins, there was over 100 penalty minutes and each game so the goalies getting tangled with the penalty minutes. Of course both games saw outrageous scores with Boston winning 8-6 and NY Islanders winning 9-3. The beginning of the season saw the league and the NHLPA trying to eliminate head shots, but now for some reason teams have gone back to the 1970's with just plain old line brawls and the NHL executives are not happy about it. They cracked down hard on the NY Islanders by fining them $100,000 and suspending 2 of their players. Still Penguins owner thought they could have punished the Islanders more. I have never been a fan of fighting and I especially get annoyed with big line brawls, but I was surprisingly entertained by this wheels turn of events, especially the Montreal, Boston game. I am glad that these large fighting shows did not stop the teams from scoring but I don't want any teams to go and try to pull a stunt like this against every team they play like in the movie Slapshot or the Philadelphia Flyers of the 1970's. I hope the NHL provides teams some guidelines on what is acceptable for fighting because otherwise fighting could go out of control again.
I expect that when I come back next week to write again I will have more trades to cover, but who goes where is still any ones guess. Many teams are looking for defensmen and low cost skilled forwards. There are not to many teams looking for goaltending but that doesn't mean they won't move. This time of year is exciting for hockey analysis because everyone has their own opinions of what a GM is planning with the trades they make and the discussions that results are fun to be a part of. Let's see what the future has to show for these NHL teams.
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