I can confirm that what Elliotte Friedman wrote in his latest 30 Thoughts (always a must-read for any NHL fan) about the trading market for NHL defensemen is absolutely true. On a league-wide basis, general managers have set their trade demands for defensemen so ridiculously high -- even on players who have been healthy scratches and/or have albatross contracts or are impending unrestricted free agents next summer -- that it's become very tough to get trades made.
Even the salary cap forced preseason trades of Johnny Boychuk and Nick Leddy came at high costs relative to what we used to see when other clubs know a team is forced to trade out of necessity. Now that the season is a month old and the inevitable attrition has started, the prices are astronomical relative to players' actual role or worth on the ice.
This will not last forever: Sooner or later, there is a going to be a market correction. I personally think it will be sooner). When a GM or two realizes he's going to be stuck with players he either doesn't want, can't justify on the team's cap compared to other needs or knows he's going to lose as a free agent (with no return coming back), we will see a couple trades that set the market back closer to where it should be. These moon-and-the-stars trade demands are not realistic nor are they ultimately beneficial to the teams that really ought to be sellers.
Truth of the matter: There is a select group of defensemen in the game who are truly worth their weight in gold. Then there's a slew of good ones with certain glaring flaws, plain old vanilla ones and a whole lot of marginal ones. Sooner or later the law of supply and demand will balance out and the teams that hold out too long on the excessive prices -- think housing market boom and bust -- will end up trading for less than they could have gotten before had they been even somewhat reasonable.
Strange times, my friends.
HockeyBuzz webcast is at 1 PM EST today as usual. I am out of commission today, so things are in the very skilled hosting hands of Mike Augello, Kevin Allen, Ryan Garner and Ty Anderson: