Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Deadly Trade Deadline Trades

by Todd Maternowski

Hola, amigos de hockey! Last we delved deep into the dizzyingly dark depths of depravity defining dumbassery: this week, I was planning on celebrating the 100th Thursday Morning Cupcheck with an awesomely amazing party (I even got balloons in the shape of the beachballs that Turco was letting in early in the season!), but despite my best efforts and the promise of homemade Polish cooking (those pickled smores my great-grandma made on the outskirts of Gdansk are to die for), not a single NHL player showed up. Well, unless you count the New York Islanders --who I didn't invite-- who showed up unannounced at my door about an hour before my party even started. Surprising, since at that very moment I was watching them on Versus (it was a commercial break for Versus' top chainsaw sponsor) and they were about to go on the powerplay against Tampa. When I asked them what they were doing in my parents' basement, they simply replied: "Please let us in. We're not here to cause any trouble." Odd fellows, those Islanders. Turns out they suck at Spin-the-Bottle, too... who'd have thought?

As awesome as that party was, it couldn't hold a candle to last year's one-year anniversary. I'm still trying to get Todd Bertuzzi to return my phone calls --that massive dry-cleaning bill isn't going to pay itself-- but there are more pressing issues at hand in el mundo de hockey. I'm talking, of course, of the Worst Day in Sports: Trade Deadline Day.

With just a week to go before the deadline, NHL GMs annually go through the Rite of Dumb Passage, in which they throw all their promising young studs at crappy teams in exchange for over-the-hill mercenaries. Fans go wild with disappointment, teams fail to make the playoff cut, said vets sign elsewhere in the offseason, and the beautiful cycle begins anew.

With the Dallas Stars ailing on all fronts, and with just one real center and four lines to roll out, many Stars fans are drowning in their own drool over what NHL-caliber centers are available from which teams. But rather than hashing out the pros and cons of the next Stars deadline bust, why not crack open some dusty tomes and look at the Recent History of Deadline Deals? ..No? Not interested? Really? You mea--wait, yeah, it's that boring? Seriously, I had no idea. Sorry, I got nothin' else... dusty tomes it is.

Last year's deadline deals were boundless and plentiful, as every team and their mother threw prospects around like horseshoes to get that playoff edge (well, almost every team... more on that in a minute). Chief among them was the Pittsburgh Penguins, who sent three prospects and a 1st-round pick to Atlanta for Marian Hossa. While Hossa helped Pittsburgh get through the cakewalk that is the Leastern Conference, he was unable to, y'know, score or something, against Detroit in the Finals, then promptly bolted for the Wings in the offseason. Bully for the Penguins on that Grade-A deadline decision!

The Stars made arguably the second-biggest trade near the deadline, sending promising backup Mike Smith, shootout specialist Jussi Jokinen and checking center Jeff Halpern to Tampa for Brad Richards and Some Other Dude. Richards gave Dallas a three-line offensive threat that they took all the way to the Conference Finals, where the center promptly disappeared completely. Smith and Halpern are still with Tampa, and are sorely missed. Much like the Hossa trade, this one took the team far but not far enough (although, to be fair, Richards is still signed to Dallas for several more years, including this year's inevitable Stanley Cup victory season).

The Sharks made a big splash last year, acquiring Brian Campbell from Buffalo for Steve Bernier and a 1st rounder. Campbell made some flashy highlight-reel assists in the waning days of the regular season, looked overmatched in the first round against a physical Calgary team before sinking into a guru-like Ineffective Trance against the Stars during San Jose's annual Second Round Chokejob. Campbell then bolted for in$ane money in Chicago, and the Sharks were left with nothing to show for the trade but a fired coach.

Most hilariously of all the deadline trades last season, Colorado actually sent a first-rounder to Columbus for malcontent defenseman Adam Foote. Colorado's ticket to the Cup Finals now confirmed, their unstoppable march to the Finals was cut short only by a mild case of KP --Can't Play-- along with yet another first-round no-show by a team of offense-only cherrypickers.

The list goes on, and a quick glance at some of the big deals from 2007 tells the same story: Sharks sending St. Louis two scrubs and a 1st for Bill "I Can't Move My Skates" Guerin... Detroit picking up Todd Bertuzzi for Shawn Matthias... Stars picking up Ladislav "Wet Paper" Nagy for Tjarnqvist and a 1st... Ryan Smyth going to the Isles for a gaggle of players and a 1st... Nashville trading Scottie Upshall, a 1st and a 3rd to Philly for 14 or so games of Peter Forsberg.... and most hilariously, Atlanta acquiring Keith "Born Before the Railroad" Tkachuk for Glen Metropolit, two 1sts, a 2nd and a 3rd. In a related deal, Atlanta sent Philly promising young d-man Coburn for was-never-quite-promising d-man Zhitnik.

Without exception, the hockey media lauded these moves and the super-genuis GMs that made them: the only real question left to ask was "Will there be enough Stanley Cups to go around?" After each of these teams skated in the season's final game holding the Cup, their respective GMs were positively aglow as they took the podium an---wait, what's that? Not a single one of these trades made any of these teams better? Shirley you can't be serious!

Actually, astute readers will notice that in all of the 2007 trades mentioned, none of the vets re-signed with the teams that sold the farm to acquire them. And none of those teams made it very far in the playoffs.

Who, then, does go far in the playoffs? A quick history lesson:

The 2008 Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings traded a 2nd and a 4th for Brad Stuart, who performed servicably as a #4 or #5 defenseman.

The 2007 Stanley Cup Champion Anaheim Ducks traded Michael Wall for Brad May, who, uh, may have gotten some minutes somewhere?

The 2006 Carolina Hurricanes traded some scrubs and a 2nd rounder for Mark Recchi, who --gasp!-- actually had a serious impact on his club's success.

The 2004 Tampa Bay Lightning traded an 8th rounder for Timo Helbling, who I believe now makes gold teef for heretics.

The 2003 New Jersey Devils made no deadline trades (altho in all fairness, the year before they got Joe Nieuwndyk and Jamie Langenbrunner for Jason Arnott)

The 2002 Detroit Red Wings traded Yuri Butsayev (great name for a goalie) and a 3rd for Jiri Slegr.

The 2001 Colorado Avalanche traded Deadmarsh, Miller and a 1st for Rob Blake and Steven Reinprecht, both of whom made an actual impact.

The 2000 New Jersey Devils traded C Brendan Morrison and C Denis Pederson to Vancouver Canucks for RW Alexander Mogilny.

The 1999 Dallas Stars traded a 2nd rounder for Derek Plante, who's knowledge of the internal workings of the Sabres gave the Stars priceless insider information.

The common thread in the past decade of Cup winners? Well, there isn't one exactly as such, but only two of the nine actually benefited tremendously (heck, even marginally) from a deadline deal, while the vast majority just kept the team they had iced all season long and rode that great locker room chemistry to the top. I've harped on it before, and will continue to do so until the End of Days --when the Bettmans will Lie With the Lambs-- but in a team sport, a group of players working together will always defeat a team that puts talent first. Snapping up a fill-in fourth liner or two is probably a good idea in some cases, but unless your team is already dysfunctional, shaking up the locker room in order to acquire some overhyped mercenary is an exercise in stupidity. Especially with so little time left in the season to smooth chemistry issues out: any team leader worth his salt knows that teams acquire cohesion and effectiveness in stages, over time.

The numbers bear this out: just two of the last nine Cup Champions made a major deal at the deadline that worked out for them. That's 22%, an amazingly high num--oh, wait, what about all the teams that didn't win the Cup that year? Countless hopes are dashed every year due to irresponsible GMing. A conservative estimate, considering all the team desperate to make the playoff cut, would probably be in the range of 1-2% effectiveness. If even that. (Coincidentally, I play on those same odds every time I go to Winstar).

Hopefully Dallas' GM Hulkson is reading this --or having it read to them at naptime-- and they do the right thing by doing next-to-nothing. While it will suck for those Stars fans steeped in their Yahoo Fantasy Leagues, for the health of the team (hey, you know we can also win this Cup thing next year when we've got more than two healthy Top Six forwards), Hulkson should find a nice spot and plop on their laurels: while the team is having scoring problems without Morrow/Zubov/Richards/Modano, the entire team is working hard, winning puck battles and showing tremendous effort right now. It'd be a huge mistake to mess with that level of effort and sacrifice in order to put a temporary band-aid on the team's scoring issues.

That's it for this week's Cupcheck: tune in next week for my next column: "Alexei Kovalev: Worth the Five First-Rounders We Traded For Him?" My resounding yes may surprise you.