Quick Friday Funbag: Happy Trade Deadline Day
Let's get to some of your questions before I have to hop on Vancouver radio.
The NHL trade deadline has come and gone.
I laid out some of my overall thoughts at EP Rinkside, which you can check out here.
I also did a post-deadline podcast over at Spits & Suds, which you can listen to here.
Iām also about to record a roundtable deadline discussion over the PDOCast with Dimitri Filipovic, which I also encourage you to listen to when itās available.
In the meantime, letās get to some quick reader questions about what happened on deadline day.
Andrew Sigman I know I need some sort of scorecard to keep up with all the movement. It seems like more teams have dumped/ traded players this season.
I think we all do, there was a ton of movement this week, including some jaw-dropping deals at the deadline after the Vegas Golden Knights decided to be, well, the Vegas Golden Knights.
We should have known this was going to happen, in fact I wrote about Vegas just yesterday for this reason.
Let's talk about the Vegas Golden Knights
As far as keeping track of all the moves, here is a handy PDF with all the trades on deadline day:
Davis Dunkleberger Did the Stars do enough to keep up with the arms race that took place between the Jets and Avs?
I think the Stars are still a contender to win the Stanley Cup, and honestly out of the Western Conference Iām still picking them to play the Florida Panthers in the final series of the season.
Vegas got better, so did Colorado and Winnipeg. But the Stars to me added what they needed with Chris Tanev, and brought in another key deadline piece with Logan Stankoven who is better than many of the other pieces that other contenders had to actually pay for.
Maybe Iām wrong, but in general Iām not a fan of making moves for the sake of moves. The Stars acted with purpose, and I think they are still in a good spot.
CScotty Do the Stars have cap space to bring up Bourque?
They do, and at some point here I should build out a Mavrik Bourque scouting report/profile so people can get a better idea of what to expect if/when that happens.
If we assume Evegenii Dadonov wonāt return before the playoffs, and I assume he wonāt considered heās still not skating, then there is more than enough space with the LTIR room.
Timothy Wilkes The only question I have is "why?... Why do they keep doing g this to us every year? I mean, all reports were that Jim Nill had carte blanche to go out and make deals happen... So... Just why trade for a 34 year old that only helps you for 3 months if that's all you're going to do?"
I disagree that Jim Nill didnāt do enough. He could have done more, sure, but the Stars had a large need and addressed without having to pay through the nose for the reinforcements.
If the Stars are also willing to give Bourque some run, then well, I think itāll still be a long hockey spring in Dallas.
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Listing to the PDOcast and had a couple questions. Dimitri was talking about how players play through more injuries in the playoffs than they do in the regular season. If that's true, does that mean they are cleared by medical staff to play those games? Seems like if medical staff clears a player to play in the playoffs, they could also clear them to play in the regular season unless their standard are different for the playoffs. If that's the case, isn't the medical staff is facilitating cap circumvention? Seems pretty black and white, either you're able to play or not regardless of the importance of the game.
Thanks for the response here. Grey area with this sure seems to facilitate cap circumvention if a teams wants to play it that way. It's time for the league to find a black and white solution. Something like a cap compliant team on the ice at all times would clear all of this up in an instant. It will have to wait until the next CBA to get dealt with so we'll just be seeing teams that take advantage of the grey until then. It has worked perfectly for the league though. A good Vegas team from the start made the value of all teams and future expansion teams skyrocket. This fan (and plenty of others) are a bit tired of this easily fixable issue coming up year after year with different teams.