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Report: St. Louis Asked for a Trade; Callahan the Rumored Return?
February 23, 2014, 10:40 PM ET [126 Comments]
Michael Stuart
Ottawa Senators Blogger • RSS • Archive • CONTACT
HockeyBuzz is lucky to have a great cast of writing talent, including one Jan Levine. If you took a moment to read through Jan’s blog from last night, you would know that a potential Marty St. Louis-for-Ryan Callahan deal was discussed in the comments thread. After reading that last night and going to sleep, I awoke to a bevy of emails, messages, and texts asking for my own thoughts on the rumor.

Before commenting, here’s the latest from Jan:
Per the twitter conversations Boomer had Sunday morning, names ruled out are Marchand, Lucic, Simmonds, Clarkson, Neil and Erat. The latest name I have heard is Martin St. Louis, which makes sense.

Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos fueled the fire just a few moments ago with this tweet:


It’s not difficult to understand why a rumor like this popped up. After St. Louis was snubbed by his own general manager back in January, there was some speculation that he would be unhappy in Tampa. Was the relationship with Steve Yzerman fractured? Could St. Louis go out and play for the man who left him off Team Canada’s roster not once, but twice? Those questions were asked time and time again.

I personally thought that Marty answered those questions with his play on the ice. As Lightning head coach Jon Cooper predicted when the roster announcement was made, the exclusion motivated Marty to the nth degree. To say that St. Louis was a great performer for the Lightning through January and February would be to understate things in a most glaring way. He was phenomenal. In the absence of Steven Stamkos, Marty St. Louis has stepped up and proven once again that he is one of the league’s most talented and potent offensive forces.

When Stamkos withdrew from the Sochi games due to injury and St. Louis was named to replace him, I really felt that we were done with this conversation. Marty has been doubted and passed over throughout his career, but he’s always managed to find an opportunity. Sochi proved to be just another example of that, as St. Louis now proudly owns a Gold medal.

So, where is this rumor coming from?

A good place to start might be this piece from Larry Brooks of the New York Post. While the overarching theme of the article debunks the St. Louis-Callahan rumor, one small paragraph buried deep in the middle caught my eye:
St. Louis, who carries a cap hit of $5.625 million, is believed to have met separately and a few weeks apart with club owner Jeff Vinik and Yzerman in the wake of being bypassed by his own GM for Team Canada.

I’ve already alluded to the fact that Marty was upset about being excluded from Canada’s initial roster. It’s not exactly a secret. The fact that he met with Yzerman and Vinik privately and separately wouldn’t mean much during the course of a normal year, but is it possible that these post-announcement meetings had some measure of importance? Is Marty looking to move on? Regardless of what you see on Twitter or anywhere else, I don’t think any of us truly know the answer to that question. However, it is worth noting that Brooks's comments fit with the Kypreos report cited above.

With all that said, now it’s time for me to give my thoughts on the rumor. The first comment I made today was this, and I still stand by it:


Ryan Callahan is a pending-UFA looking to cash in on a monster deal. There’s no way that the Lightning would pay him what he’s reportedly looking for. So, I’ll ask, does it make sense for Steve Yzerman to trade his team captain and the franchise’s all-time greatest player for a rental who won’t be with the Lightning next season? The answer is no. St. Louis, at this point, carries infinitely more value for the Lightning than Ryan Callahan ever could.

Outside of my commentary, a number of respected journalists weighed in to take this rumor down a peg. I’ve already linked to Brooks’s Post piece, so here’s some additional reaction:












Like me, the journalists cited above don't believe that this rumor will become reality. It doesn't make sense. There are too many reasons for this not to happen. Kypreos followed up his initial tweet with this message, which echoes those I've already listed:


My final comment is this. I don't think there's any way that Yzerman deals his best (healthy) player for a rental who won't contribute to the team or community like Marty has for over a decade. We should all be able to agree that a Callahan for St. Louis deal doesn't make sense, even if a pick or prospect is thrown in by the Rangers. With that said, the fact that Yzerman doesn't want to trade Marty for a rental doesn't necessarily mean that St. Louis is happy to be a member of the Lightning. If he did ask for a trade in those meetings with Yzerman and Vinik, the Lightning franchise could be in for a rocky few months. Hopefully, as Erlendsson speculated, the Gold medal win removes any bad blood that might have existed between player and manager.

As always, thanks for reading.
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