It's easy to say, 'make a deal' from the fan sidelines. You can bellow for one, beg, cry, and plead. You can also assume that no attempts have been made to deal, that all parties are cooperative, and that there is no outside influence but that would be naive, very naive.
Right now the Jets fandom wants action. They are demanding it to the point that 'draft and develop' is part of the #standpatchevy tags in response to the apparent lack of activity. Today when Gary Lawless tweeted the following:
My sense is teams are still trying to lowball #nhljets with trade offers. Cheveldayoff's price is high and will remain so. No deals imminent
— gary lawless (@garylawless) June 26, 2014then
Chevy "I've been open. We're listening to everything." #nhljets #bn
— gary lawless (@garylawless) June 26, 2014some Twitter eyebrows were raised, mine included.
While I'm no true insider to the point that I can devote my full attention to this kind of stuff Winnipeg is a small place and works on about 3 degrees of separation, not 6. I do hear intriguing pieces of information and I try to corroborate them with others people. I also quickly jump to some 'iffy' conclusions mainly for the idea of conversation, that's what blogging and writing is about: a generator to allow discussion.
They grey area in so much of what is being whispered and suggested about the Jets as we inch closer to the 2014 NHL Entry draft is how close has Chevy been in making a deal? My belief is that he has not been as close as some would believe and that might be to the point of even listening.
I 'hear' a lot of things, but I only 'listen' to the stuff that makes sense and is interesting. Trade offers are a lot like this. Your phone may ring, but what you hear on the other side is hardly worth listening too. There's another side to this scenario too, if you want to listen people have to know you're ready and that's where timing comes in.
I've often used this space to question some or many of the Jets moves from the angle of why but for this team and organization it seems the perspective of timing is more relevant.
The Jets had a chance to retain a coach from Atlanta while they did their 2-year evaluation period thus giving them a freebie on firing a coach. They went with their own guy before they even knew what they had in the organization other than mediocre results and has that changed.
-They gave Claude Noel a 1 year extension before last season so he would not be a lame-duck coach. The result was that they were nearly forced to fire him mid-season as the team had 'tuned him out'.
-They tried to work with Bogosian's injured wrist before opting for serious surgery and a long recovery time that was only off-set by the lockout. (perhaps that was good timing)
-They re-signed Enstrom a full year before his existing deal was expiring while allowing Wheeler, Little and Bogosian to file for arbitration.
-After one season, and their evaluation process still in effect, they signed Pavelec to a five-year deal at money that make him difficult to trade without eating a significant portion of that money.
-Before seeing the market and some of the play from farm hands in St. John's on their Calder Cup run they signed journeyman/veteran defenceman Mark Stuart for 4 more years with a hefty pay raise.
The question comes up again in regards to timing as we enter the peak of the silly season why start asking teams to give you some thing to listen to now?
Tim Campbell of the Winnipeg Free Press provided this quote today:
"I've been pretty open that from an organization standpoint we're going to listen to everybody, he said. "If there's a guy that a team has interest in, then my phone is open for a phone call. that shouldn't be characterized that anything is imminent or that I've got deals on the table or not, and if I do, there's certain things that have to happen."
Before this piece was out noted Jets ciritic and humourist (also a stalwart Flyers fan) put this jewel of a tweet together
Chevy coming out and saying he's open for business seems like a desperate cry for someone to come play with him in the sandbox..
— Kat (@KitKat_P) June 26, 2014She might not be wrong. It sounds a bit desperate but it also means that perhaps the Jets GM could have timed his moment of action poorly, again.
Before the days of car engines that looked like Star Wars space engines when you did a tune up you used a timing light. It was a strobe that allowed you to synch the firing of the pistons and the cylinder from the distributer cap. It helps everything align right so that your engine runs at peak performance. It's still true in cars today that timing is everything if you want to run smoothly and optimize performance.
It's important for a Chevy to know that the timing is in order and everything is firing right, even more so if you want a Jet to finally take off. So far it's been mainly misfires and the last three seasons support that something isn't working. Starting tomorrow we're going to get a good look to see if Chevy has checked his engine because another year without lift off from this squadron is not going to fly with anyone.