Did everybody have a Happy World Sandwich Day!? The day where you can go to Subway and get a mediocre sandwich an extra-large drink and get a second mediocre sandwich for free! Woohoo! At least the Food Bank is going to get some money, so there’s that.
Let’s get right to it though. Trade!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A Perfect Deal – Oftentimes we spend an overabundance of time to try to pick apart a deal that happens in sports. Trying to find who won and who lost. Sometimes it’s a simple win or loss. Sometimes deals change as time passes and shift our vision of it. Sometimes and this is very rare, you can just sit back and enjoy a deal that all sides can be happy about.
This is one of those trades in my opinion. Though I will concede there is room to say Nashville are the ultimate winners.
Nashville – Kyle Turris Ottawa – Matt Duchene Colorado – Samuel Girard, Vladislav Kamenev, Andrew Hammond, Shane Bowers, 1st, 2nd and 3rd in 2018
So that’s a lot of players. I must say that this has hopefully shut up all the talk about Duchene’s value to NHL GM’s. That is a ridiculous haul. Let’s look at the deal and why I think all sides won.
Nashville – Before this trade, the Predators centre depth was pretty much Johansen-Bonino-Jarnkrok-Sissons. I don’t know about you, but any team using Bonino or Jarnkrok as their second line centre are weak at the position. By adding Kyle Turris, they upgrade substantially at the position and shift Bonino (when healthy) to the preferred 3rd line position. It allows for a bottom-6 that should be very hard to play against and a more dangerous top-6. This is a team that got all the way to the Cup Finals with Mike Fisher as their second line centre. That’s how strong the defense is and how hot Rinne was.
The Preds also didn’t give much up when you really look at it. They gave up Samuel Girard who is a fantastic prospect. But they can afford it, because their top-4 are locked up for years to come AND they have an equal (and some feel better) defensive prospect in Dante Fabbro waiting in the wings. It also helps that they have decent enough prospects in Alexandre Carrier and Jack Dougherty also nearing NHL levels of play. Then we get to Kamenev who is also a good prospect, but expendable. They recently drafted Eeli Tolvanen who has passed Kamenev in my estimation with his strong play in the KHL this year. Then the second round pick is a second round pick. Not a huge give.
Strong drafting has allowed the Predators to constantly re-stock through trades or internal promotion. It’s quite amazing really. Turris also signed for 6 years at 6 million per, which is a good enough deal for a 1B centre these days. Overall I think this was a great deal for the Preds, because they have comparable prospects in their system to the guys they traded and they managed to add a player of Turris’ level without giving up any roster players. They solved their biggest issue without having to compromise.
Ottawa – Ottawa gets their fabled first line centre. They also get out of the need to pay Turris for his swan song deal. It’s easy to point at the 6x6 that Turris signed in Nashville and question why they wouldn’t just pay that. It’s pretty simple. Nashville’s tax rates are extremely low compared to Ottawa. Turris would likely want slightly more than just 6 million since he knows he would get that from a desperate team in the offseason. This way they have a cost controlled Duchene for another year before they need to pony up the dough. One thinks they hope he can play well enough to deserve a dump truck of money. Duchene in my opinion will fit very well with Mike Hoffman. With Brassard playing so well with Stone this year, Turris basically lost his wingman. Stone is the straw that stirs the drink in Ottawa and he seems to have developed a lot of chemistry with Brassard. Duchene has the ability to run a line by himself and can give the team depth.
I think he’s a better player than Turris and a player they know they can keep. I think with Colin White and the impressive showing Logan Brown had in the pre-season basically made them feel comfortable in giving up Bowers. Melnyk is probably very happy he isn’t paying the Hamburglar millions of dollars to play in Belleville. Lastly this is a good move to show Erik Karlsson they want to win. They got the big name guy. Duchene’s reputation far outmatches what he is, but reputations can matter. Whether it’s true or not, this is a team that thinks they can win the Cup now and this move certainly helps them in that goal. They got Duchene without giving up White or Chabot. I think that’s key here. They didn’t need to give up the golden prospects people expected HAD to be in a Duchene deal.
Colorado – The rebuild is here. Bye Duchene. Bye likely one of Johnson or Barrie. Falling for Dahlin. This one is going to hurt. Though with Yakupov expected to be productive, you probably figured that going into the season. Sakic’s patience paid off in a big way. He got all of the picks and some decent prospects. Girard being the lynchpin. Girard has already shown that he can be an NHL player at just 19 in a limited capacity. Give him some time in the AHL and he could be a really special player and at the very least a top-4 defender. He’s just such a smooth and smart skater. Kamenev is a quality prospect He could likely play for the Avs this year on the third line. Bowers as well is a quality prospect and has played fine for his age in the NCAA thus far. He’s not really projected to be a top-6 player, but two-way centres are always welcome. Plus they get the picks. At the end of the day, they got a good haul for a disgruntled player who clearly wanted out. It was inevitable he would get moved at some point. People were skeptical of the return he would get and now looks like they were wrong.
Also it was pretty funny that he was traded in the first period of a game...and that he will face his former team twice in Sweden very soon. For that alone this was a winner.
Game Marleauing Goals – I neglected to talk about Patrick Marleau scoring his 100th Game Winning Goal against the Ducks. Game Winning Goals are a weird thing to quantify. We like to think of the iconic ones and just imagine they all are like this or that important. But a GWG can be an empty netter if things go odd. I’d like to add my useless congratulations to Patrick Marleau who sits 8th of all time in GWG’s and joins an illustrious group. Even weirder when you look at this particular statistic is just how random it can be. Jagr leads the NHL with 135. Which makes sense because he has played more games than you can imagine. Not weird is Ovechkin at 96 (11th overall) in 573 less games than Marleau. I know people love to laugh at OV not winning the Cup or the Gold, but come on, his goal scoring…it’s not even close. Weirdest is Gretzky who has the most goals of anybody ever and forever…with just 91 GWG’s. Shows how useless this stat is…but still fun…I guess.
Git Gud – For those who game, “Git Gud… is something you will hear. It’s become a meme largely on the back of my favourite series Dark Souls. For those not in the know, it’s a punishingly hard game that justifies its difficulty by rewarding the player when you overcome obstacles with a sense of pride that you actually did something and aren’t just sitting on your couch gesticulating. The phrase has zero value. When somebody asks you a question on how to improve or get something done, and their reply is “get good.… It’s a worthless answer. How does this relate to hockey? Well I’ve been thinking recently about the media and how they interact with players or talk about them. I feel like they’re selling us worthless platitudes with zero real world integrity. When, for example, Pierre McGuire talks about a player who is struggling, he will go on a whimsical serenade about how “He’s just really lacking confidence, he just REALLY is.… When asked how he can get out of this “confidence slump.… “Well, he just needs to keep plugging and find a way.… That’s a quote from a radio show by the way. I’m not just making it up. What does that mean? He’s saying that the way a player can get out of a slump is to “Git Gud.… There’s no solution offered. No insight. Just meaningless words and 9th grade psychology. Coaches say things like “He’s holding onto the stick too tight, he just needs to relax.… What does that even mean? It means, he needs to “Get Good.… All of these weird turns of phrases seem to be weasel words to supposedly keep people’s feelings from being hurt.
Thanks for reading.