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UPDATE: NO LAST MINUTE MOVES..................Losing Confidence in Maloney |
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It is 3:15 and it does not look like the Coyotes made any last minute moves. The team will try to get to the playoffs as is. There may always be a last minute trickle in trade announced before 4, but I am hearing - from reading Twitter, let's be honest - that nothing happened.
Kind of dissapointed that nothing exciting happened. You?
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Last night the Coyotes beat the Canucks 1-0 in regulation to move within one point of 8th place Dallas. The game was a close, tense affair and was the Coyotes first win since the Olympic break.
The win was nice and all, however, it is trade deadline day. There are seven thousand people on TSN, all downplaying what could happen. It's the most overblown spectacle in the entire NHL calendar, but that doesn't mean it isn't kinda fun.
So far the Coyotes have made two moves.
David Rundblad and prospect Mathieu Brisebois to Chicago for a second round pick.
The Coyotes drafted Kyle Turris 3rd overall in 2007. They traded him to Ottawa two years ago for Rundblad and a second round pick. Considering that the Coyotes have zero first line players currently and Turris is breaking out with the Senators and starting to live up to his potential, what the Coyotes now have to show for that trade is a disaster.
The second rounder was used to get Vermette, who is a solid player and who has been a decent surprise this year. That doesn't matter though, because Vermette is 31 and on the downside of his prime. Kyle Turris is 25 and just entering his prime with the chance to be an elite player. Turris will be twice the player Vermette is.
Rundblad is the epitome of how to mismanage an asset. It was questionable at the time, with OEL and Yandle, why the Coyotes would add a third offensive defenseman. The emergence of Michael Stone coupled with the uselessness of dressing a player like Rundblad on the third defensive pairing meant that he only played 26 games in his time as a Coyote. Though he remains a talented guy with a chance to be very good, he never got a fair chance in Phoenix and by not playing him they destroyed his trade value.
So now in exchange for the number 3 overall pick of 2007 the Coyotes have a second rounder and Vermette. I like Vermette, but not as a first liner and certainly not as a return for Kyle Turris.
This trade, in a vacuum, is fine. A second rounder may even be more than I thought Rundblad would fetch. However, as it relates to the Turis trade, and as an example asset mismanagement, I think its enough to fire Maloney over. Just horrible.
Briebois, if you are wondering is a low depth chart offensive defenseman and a longshot to have an impact in the NHL.
Chris Brown and Rotislav Klesla and a fourth round pick to Washington for Martin Erat and John Mitchell.
Klesla is 31 and on an expiring contract. He was not good enough to crack the lineup for most of this year for the Coyotes.
Erat is 32 and on the last year of a contract that has a cap hit of 4.5 million. In real dollars, he makes significantly less, which is probably why the cheapo Coyotes targeted him. Erat has 1 goal this year in 53 games. That is the same amount of goals as Klesla, the possibly slowest player and least offensive defenseman in the NHL.
Mitchell is a 27 year old minor leaguer/grinder who has been assigned to Portland.
Chris Brown is a second round pick from '09 and is a 6'2 power forward who is 22 years old. Brown is a "sure-fire NHLer" according to the annual Forecaster Hockey Yearbook. He has 14 goals in 51 games for the Portland Pirates so far this year.
In my opinion, this a joke of a trade. Why the team would take an almost five million dollar cap hit next year for a guy with one goal is beyond my capabilities to understand. Chris Brown has played 11 games over the last two years for the Coyotes, but when he has been called up he hasn't exactly been given a ton of ice time. It's perfectly plausible to think that if they called up Brown and put him on the second line for the rest of the year that he would be as effective, at least, as Erat. Certainly he would be more physical.
What's worse is that the few journalists who cover the Coyotes are so un-critical that it's pathetic. This trade has been met with the joy which should be reserved for the acquisition of at least a 2 goal scorer.
Oh but he's a Czech and he can play with the other two Czechs. Ugghhhh...this kind of ridiculous reasoning just about melts my brain. People from the same country don't automatically love each other or improve each other's play. They might share somethings in common, but this kind of reductive thinking has no basis in reality. I could see if he was going to a team with the only other Czech player in the world, but that isn't the case. Erat is a 32 year old man who has been a professional hockey player his whole life. If his ability to be effective is based on playing with guys from his own country, then what good is he?
Erat is a creative offensive player, mostly a pass first play-maker, who is an OK two-way player. He isn't great without the puck, but he does kill penalties despite not really being a physical threat. He can fill the void the Coyotes supposedly have on the second line with Hanzel and Vrbata. However, when Antoine Vermette is your teams first line centre, and the GM says that acquiring Erat was the teams "number one priority" and that he's the player they have been focusing on and watching the most, all you can do is shake your head and wait for Maloney to be fired.
Are you telling me that Erat and his one goal and mostly unphysical game will vault this team to the playoffs? That Chris Brown or Andy Miele or Henrick Samualson couldn't have been given a shot? That the cap hit for next year and the loss of one of the team's only decent forward prospects is worth it for a guy who has been called one of the worst dressing room presences in the entire league? A guy who has been criticized for his lack of effort and who has requested trades from two teams in a single year?
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The rumour I heard today is that Phoenix wants to use the second rounder they got for Rundblad to add Hemsky from Edmonton. Hemsky is a good player and very talented. Certainly he is way better than Erat. But he is also 30 years old and plays smaller than his six feet. I am not sure how adding two smallish offensive minded forwards will help a team that prides itself on its defensive identity. I know the Coyotes can't score, but adding old washed up former goal scorers who won't fit into the system in place can't be the best way to help the team. Again, I just can't understand why they want to trade youth for fringe players who used to be decent scorers.
Again, this trade is just typical of the un-creative, un-ambitious, non-aggressive management style that is and has been the hallmark of the Don Maloney era. After yesterday's trades and the Hemsky rumour, it is an era I am starting to long for the end of.
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