As the clock passes over the nine am mark (noon hour in the east) Sean O’Donnell is about to make plans to head to Anaheim, waving his no trade clause to join the Ducks.
Gord Miller at TSN is a guy half full kind of person; he says that finally things are starting to pick up on the trading front, bet he never thought he’d be THIS busy!!
Denis Gauthier is leaving Gretzkyville to head for Philadelphia meaning he is even odds to be on a Stanley Cup contender now! Around the same time the Senators throw Mike Morrison a life ring picking him up to help their youngster Emery through the stretch drive and act as an insurance policy in case the Dominator is done.
At ten to ten the Canucks have made their second move of the day, picking up Mikka Noronen from Buffalo to help out the Alex Auld in Vancouver. Noronen says later that he hopes to compete for the number one job there, which won’t make him popular with that fellow Cloutier! In an interesting bit or irony, Noronen like Cloutier hasn’t played a game in the NHL in over three months!
Washington gives Jeff Friesen reason for hope, sending him back to Anaheim where he once played before. Friesen ends up on TSN telling one and all that he found out about the trade by watching TSN, time for a new agent there Jeff.
Its 10:00 and two hours til the deadline and Sportsnet scoops the commercial loaded TSN with news that Olli Jokinen has signed a 5 year deal with the Florida Panthers, now both networks turn their attention to what’s up with Roberto Luongo.
A bit of surfing at 10:15 finds that the CBC trading website is woefully behind the curve, TSN’s seems to be the one to watch, with Sportsnet updating quickly as well, but it must be coffee break at the CBC as they are still breaking news of the Todd Simpson trade of a few hours ago. If any one at the CBC is reading, HockeyNation offers them our services if they wish. We’d be more than happy to take over the Mother Corp’s hockey web and we’d like only a share of Ron McLean’s and Don Cherry’s pay envelope for our troubles.
At 10:20 James Duthie states the obvious when he says that so far this trading day has been a bit of a dud. They take a chance and head for commercial, hoping against hope that they aren’t scooped again by the folks at Sportsnet.
Sportsnet is busy keeping an eye on the Canuck’s practice and there’s number 44 skating around, so much for the much vaunted move of Bertuzzi out of Vancouver. They head for commercial, a fine little bit of theatre revolving around those twin themes of winter and beer, gotta like that Canadian ingenuity asking the truck driver to lessen his load to get off the ice.
Back to TSN, the Habs are happy with picking up Simpson. Capologist returns to the screen to explain how the Panthers are balancing their cap space (considering the fire sale of a few years ago, they probably have millions of space left yet)
Hodge is back with his crew they discuss which teams are making deals and why. They once again pick on the Canucks calling their moves today the thing of chicken trading. Don’t expect any invitations to the Canuck Golf tournament there guys. The panel once again wonders when Ottawa is going to pick up a centre and the Flames some more offence. In case anyone missed their theme of the segment, they once again bash Dave Nonis and his hesitancy to make the BIG deal. They wrap up their time by suggesting that nobody has won the cup based on the trades made thus far.
10:30, Recchi to Carolina, maybe yes, Maybe no! That’s the big rumour of the hour, that Mark Recchi has waived his no trade clause and is destined for Carolina. TSN jumps the gun and announces it as a trade, then backtracks a bit. They all begin to bicker over whether he’s moving or not. Your faithful scribe takes the opportunity to take a shower, after five and a half hours, it’s a bit ripe in the trading bunker!
Sportsnet says the Recchi deal is a go, TSN still a bit tentative. This leads to a discussion on how hard trades are on the families of NHLers. They pull out stats that show Mike Sillinger is the most traded player in the NHL, wonder if he’s hoping for one more trade just to pad his stats a little bit.
Canucks shore up the defence a bit as Brian Burke sends his old friend Dave Nonis Keith Carney to help out on the back end. Burke must still own property in Vancouver, one would have thought the last team he’d lend a hand to would be the McCaw owned Canucks!
As the hour closes out, we still wait to see if Recchi is officially a Hurricane or not. Seems that the teams are still negotiating, one assumes Recchi has the final say on things now.
We head into the final hour of the deadline. They keep promising us all sorts of deals are in the incubation stage, so we‘ll sit back and see what develops.
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