Trade Deadline Thoughts

Of course this would happen. The day my brand new Newbury Red Wings jersey shows up*, he gets traded to New York for Terrell or Jesse Owens or some shit**. It gives me the mental image of Ken Holland and Glen Sather sitting in a gymnasium picking for teams, and they were the last two kids left.
*not true.

Ken Holland is a smart man, and one of the best GMs -if not THE best GM- in the league. You have to believe he had other players available for trades. I doubt he was sitting up in his office answering his phone calls with the opening line "Ken Holland, it's Newbury or nobody." It kind of makes you wonder what the league's other GMs were offering in return for your hypothetical Ericsson or Ledba trades. Over at the TPL Trade Deadline chat, I mentioned that I wouldn't even give the Wings a draft beer for Lebda, let alone a draft pick. Apparently I wasn't the only one thinking that.

Also, if this hadn't been the season from Hell, what kinds of moves could have been made? I think the team's overall lackluster performance greatly decreased anyone on the team's trade value. There have been big, bright spotlights all over everyone's shortcomings and liabilities. But I still figured someone would want one of these pieces of trade bait. I mean, someone took that one Leino guy. Maybe Holland lost Paul Holmgren's phone number today.

Meanwhile, while Ken Holland was sitting behind his desk eating a Hot and Ready, with a mouth too full to answer the phone, Carolina's Jim Rutherford and Washington's George McPhee were amassing huge overage fees on their wireless plans, making 5 and 4 deals respectively. I believe we had the expendable bodies to come out of the day with a transaction sheet longer than that. With the injuries we've been through causing some of our AHLers to get a decent chunk of NHL experience via trial by fire, and even our regularly dressed players acting like they've already booked hotels for the middle of May somewhere, I expected more than just Newbury to be traded.

Personally, I had Abdelkader, Williams, Draper, and Lebda on my "If-I-Ran-Shit" trading block. Kindl being a "definite maybe". I'm sure there were many others out there with their own dream trade scenarios. And reasonable ones, too. None of the "Bertuzzi-Janik-Draper" to Columbus for "Nash-Commodore" like you could pull off on NHL 04 (although, how awesome would that have been?). So for us to walk out of this with just another player that will probably never see the Winged Wheel across their chest (raise your hand, Ole-Kristian. No, your hand! Not your elbow!), it kind of leaves you confused.

I see it being one of two things. Someone in charge somewhere feels comfortable enough with this team as is, and didn't see us needed that extra help to make a playoff run/Cup run. And I really, really hope that that was the discussion leading to the 3pm deadline. Because the alternative in my head is that the team as a whole just cashed in their chips and is waiting for free agency.


**I would just like to say that when I was writing this blog, I had only read about the Newbury trade on Twitter and a few articles online. I didn't really look into it that much (you guys did a lot of it for me, I admit.) With the Terrell/Jesse Owens line, I was only trying to make a joke because TO played in New York this past season (albeit with the Bills), and with Jesse Owens having the same initials as Jordan Owens. At the time, I had no idea what Jordan looked like or what race he was, and was not trying to put any racist or inconsiderate comments out there at all.