With the trade deadline just over a week away, everyone knew trades were going to start happen. The first 2 were fairly close to each other when on Thursday Philadelphia added Nick Grossman from Dallas for a couple of draft picks while Tampa Bay sent Dominic Moore to San Jose for a draft pick. In Grossman the Flyers get a big, strong defenceman which has been missing from their team since Chris Pronger was injured. The Sharks acquired the depth forward Moore to play centre on their third line. Then on Friday a big trade happened when Nashville added Hal Gill from Montreal in exchange for top prospect Blake Geoffrion, forward Rob Slaney and a second round pick. Though Gill is a good player, this is a high price for the 36 year old. In only one game with the Canadians AHL team, Geoffrion already has a goal and an assist and the 24 year old has huge potential for the NHL. Still, Nashville needed another shut down defenceman and Gill was one of the better options so he should prove to be a good pick up. The final trade of the week happened last night again involving Philly and Tampa. The Flyers added another defenceman, this time Pavel Kubina, and Tampa received two draft picks and a prospect. On Thursday, Tampa General Manager Steve Yzerman announced Kubina would be a healthy scratch until he was traded and so the trade was inevitable. With Kubina, the Flyers get a defenceman similar to Grossman but with a harder shot and more playoff experience. With only a week to go until the trade deadline, the league GMs are far from finished and the rumours keep piling up.
The biggest trade rumour of the week easily were the ones involving Rick Nash. The Columbus Blue Jackets have been far and beyond the weakest team of this NHL season with only 30 points and the idea that they would trade their franchise player became a big story. Since Columbus is in a rebuilding phase, the return for the star forward would have to be big, likely to big for most teams. Two top prospects, an established young player and a first round pick is the asking price most people seem to believe will happen and it would take a trigger happy GM to pull that off. Players Columbus would be interested in include Tukka Rask and Dougie Hamilton from Boston, Johnathan Bernier and Jack Johnson from Los Angles, Cody Hodgson and Corry Schneider from Vancouver or Brayden Schen and Sean Coutrier from the Flyers. Most teams have announced they would not pay that price for Nash and I cannot imagine a trade that big happening now. However, at the draft, this trade could happen, especially if a team wants to make a dramatic change the way Philadelphia did last year. Add Nash's large and long contract and it doesn't make sense for a team to acquire him now. Nash's teammate Jeff Carter though can and should be traded. Though he won't bring back as big of a return as Columbus paid for him, some teams would like adding Carter to their team. Teams like Toronto, Nashville and Los Angles would benefit from Carter's offensive skills but there is also the risk of his poor attitude. Carter was very upset to leave the Flyers after last season and his current stats show that frustration. He might improve by going back to a winning environment.
Another big story to come out of the past week actually came from Seattle, a city without a current hockey team. It appears they will be building a facility that will be home of an NHL and NBA team. There isn't much information yet, but the arena will take two years to build and will only be built if an NHL and NBA team are both scheduled to play there. The rumour is the Phoenix Coyotes will be the team to relocate but this could still fall through since an NBA team, the Supersonics, left Seattle in 2008. It was announced more information will be given once the NHL season is over but this is interesting. Quebec City and Kansas City were already possible spots for a franchise but it looks like Seattle is the front runner now. This story has a lot more to it and I am sure I will be writing about it again in the future.
A friend pointed out something to me about the NHL standings and I thought I should mention it on the blog. The current playoff seeding system is no longer working in either conference. In the West, the Central Division has dominated while the Pacific has underperformed. But since the division leader is automatically seeded in the top 3, San Jose sits higher than St. Louis, Nashville and Chicago. In the East there is a similar scene with the Atlantic division dominating and the Southeast division slacking. The 3rd place Florida Panthers should really be behind Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New Jersey not above them. This rule should be reviewed by the NHL because some teams that are performing well will be seeded in a more difficult position even though they earned a better spot. For example, if the playoffs started today, Florida and New Jersey would play each other but Florida would have the home ice advantage even though they have less points. That does not seem fair. The new schedule was going to eliminate this problem with the top 4 in each conference making the playoffs, but that was voted down by the NHLPA. So at least for 1 more year the league will be playing in this unfair format but when planning the new one, they should consider improving playoff seeding.
Those were the stories happening this week. As always I look forward to your feedback both on twitter at @jbenny15 and by email at josh@jbenny.com. You can visit my website, www.jbenny.com to see pictures from the recent Spitfire games and to get to my articles on hockeytracker.net. Thanks for reading.
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