The NHL trade deadline used to be magic. I’m old enough to remember Marian Hossa getting traded just prior to the deadline, and the time when Shane Doan—trapped on a bad team at the end of his career, and still without a Stanley Cup—actually was happy to be traded so he could go win a Cup somewhere else. Ask Ray Bourque about it if you ever meet him.
Blame it on cowardice, ineptitude, or a salary cap, but today’s NHL features very few impact players getting traded at the deadline. Instead, we’re asked to wait with bated breath to learn where Patrick Eaves will call home for the rest of the season. But when a team is an obvious seller and has a grade A prospect other teams covet, general managers almost universally take the same approach.
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“We’d rather move this player after the season, when more teams will be able to take on his contract and we aren’t limited to dealing with only a handful of teams that can fit him and consider themselves Cup contenders.”
Anyone within earshot of Colorado Avalanche general manager Joe Sakic after he says that next week should do the Bluth family chicken dance.
Read More: The NHL’s Most Interesting Potential Trade Deadline Buyers
This season is different for a couple reasons. The big one is the number of teams that have a legitimate chance to win the Stanley Cup. We are beyond the era of when it was Chicago and Los Angeles, and then everyone else. Even last year, when Pittsburgh was the clear-cut favorite, there were only one or two other realistic contenders, so selling a big piece right before the deadline perhaps wasn’t the best idea if you wanted to gain maximum value.
If you hear Sakic use this is an excuse for not trading Matt Duchene before March 1, please contact a doctor immediately so he or she can perform emergency surgery to restore your vision because your eyes rolled out of your head.
This is a rarely seen seller’s market. Three teams in the East (Carolina, New Jersey, and Detroit) and four teams in the West (Vancouver, Dallas, Arizona, and Colorado) are definitive sellers. There are about eight teams that have a real chance at winning four rounds and a couple others with rosters that could take on Duchene with an eye toward pushing for a postseason berth this year with the room to keep him next season.
The other six sellers have support pieces that should fetch a decent price; the Avalanche have a No. 1 center with a reasonable $6 million cap hit through next season, and they should take center Nolan Patrick with the first pick as long as they win the draft lottery. No team has been in this great a position to deal an elite player in his prime since, well, the Atlanta Thrashers traded Hossa to the Penguins in 2008.
If Sakic steps to a microphone around 5 PM on March 1 and tells you he couldn’t get a fair offer for Duchene, he’s either lying or incompetent or both. Montreal, Nashville, Minnesota, and Ottawa could all use and find a way to fit Duchene on the roster. That doesn’t even include those teams on the outer rim of the postseason that the Avs could sucker into a trade.
Yes, the New York Islanders.
Look at that franchise. It’s a little more than a year from losing John Tavares to free agency. Tavares is not dying to leave, but what message are you sending if you miss the playoffs after having done nothing at the trade deadline despite a recent hot streak? Mostly, you are saying, “We hope you love Toronto and please send all our best to Matt Martin when you see him!”
Trading for Duchene kills three birds with one stone — it makes the Islanders better now, better next season and gives them potential first-line center insurance if Tavares bails for the Maple Leafs after next season. Duchene is a free agent after 2019 so he could fill the void Tavares may create.
It’s the rare trade that would make a waning fan base happy and also make the team better.
Sure, Bernie the mascot would miss Duchene, but trading him is still the best move for the Avalanche. Photo by Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
And Sakic, hopefully, knows this. Even if he doesn’t deal Duchene to the Islanders, he can use the Islanders’ interest to drive up the price when negotiating with the Canadiens or the Predators or whoever. This is the rare situation where the Avalanche have more leverage now than they would after the season. If they win the draft lottery and every team knows the Avs are dying to make room for Patrick by trading Duchene, they’ll use that against them.
Sakic and the Avs need to gamble in a way. But if the Leafs can gamble on throwing away an entire season to win a lottery, the Avs can gamble on trading Duchene for the same payoff.
None of the other sellers has anything close to Duchene. Sakic, in theory, knows this. If a GM on the other end of the phone says, “We think Radim Vrbata will do more for us down the stretch,” Sakic should hang up immediately and not take that GM’s calls until he leaves a long, rambling series of apologetic voicemails that would make Jon Favreau’s character in Swingers cringe.
Ever look into booking flights and decide that the prices are too high, so you tell yourself you’ll wait until they come down? Does that ever work? Don’t you wind up paying way more than you would have if you just sucked it up when you first went shopping?
Book your flight, Joe. Go first class in the next week instead of overpaying for a business class seat in August.
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