As I made it pretty clear in this space, I was not a believer. I did not think that the 2011 NHL trade deadline would produce much drama, nor would it produce any deal that would change the course of the final six weeks of the National Hockey League season.
It didn’t. In fact, the biggest trade took place well before the deadline when Chris Stewart, Kevin Shattenkirk and a conditional second-round draft pick was sent to St. Louis from Colorado in exchange for Erik Johnson, Jay McClement and a conditional first-round draft pick. My pal, A.J. Jakubec at the TEAM 1200 called it the closest thing to a blockbuster before the deadline and it was the closest thing to a blockbuster after the deadline passed on Monday.
There were 16 trades in the NHL on Monday involving 35 players and 12 draft picks. The biggest involved Winkler Manitoba’s Dustin Penner who was sent from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for an extremely good prospect, defenseman Colten Teubert, a first-round pick in 2011 and a conditional 2012 pick.
Here were the other highlights(?):
2) The Vancouver Canucks had an interesting day. The Canucks dealt defenceman Even Oberg, mostly of the Moose and a third-round pick, to Florida to acquire veteran forward Christopher Higgins. And they sent Moose forward Joel Perrault to the Ducks to acquite forwards Maxim Lapierre and Mac Sharp.
3) Calgary acquired veteran forward Freddie Modin from the Atlanta Thrashers for a seventh-round pick.
4) Washington picked up veteran centre Jason Arnott from New Jersey in exchange for forward David Steckel and a second-round pick in 2012. The Caps also got defenseman Dennis Wideman from Florida.
5) Phoenix acquired defenseman Rostislav Klesla and forward Dane Byers from Columbus for forward Scottie Upshall and defenseman Sami Lepisto.
6) And Atlanta picked up veteran defenseman Radek Dvorak and a fifth round pick for forwards Nicklas Bergfors and Patrick Rismiller.
Las Vegas oddsmakers had the over/under at 27.5 for number of trades on Monday. We took the under and won quite easily. Meanwhile, watching those poor guys on TSN try to make Deadline Day seem interesting was quite a comedy. Frankly, if it wasn’t for the pre-deadline day pissing match between Bob MacKenzie of TSN and Nick Kypreos of SportsNet, it would have been duller than dishwater.