Fear-filled deadline day

It can sometimes be intriguing to watch the NHL trading deadline stories unfold -- via a 10-hour television marathon, no less -- and delve a little deeper from the small screen into the big picture.

Consider this CSI: NHL, and we'll try to go all Gil Grissom while putting our microscope on the deals that went down during Wednesday's largest garage sale.

Let's begin in Toronto, where Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke candidly pointed out Big Picture No. 1: That while the deadline trades may have matched recent years in terms of quantity, the quality didn't come close to matching.

Why? Simple. If you think global warming is real, well the NHL is bracing for global economic cooling. Acquiring big-name players (who are not pending free agents) usually means assuming lucrative, lengthy contracts.

"The coming season, the cap will be based largely on this year's revenues and most of our revenues were in the till before the bad news really hit," Burke told reporters in Toronto Wednesday. "So I think it's artificial in what revenues will be for the year. But because the cap (in 2010-11) follows 12 months of financial development that's what we're going to be stuck with.

"My sense is that teams -- and I know I am -- are scared to death of 2010-2011 as far as committing a lot of money or locking up guys. This is when you go back to guys who were doing six-, seven-, 12- and 15-year deals and patting themselves on the back how smart they were. I think some teams are going to really regret going that far along."

Would the Tampa Bay Lightning have rid themselves of Vincent Lecavalier's monster $70-million, 10-year contract? Absolutely no team -- in particular his hometown Canadiens -- could consider cracking that nut.

Speaking of Tampa Bay, that brings us to Big Picture No. 2: The salary dumps from struggling teams such as the Lightning and the Phoenix Coyotes, the latter team dealing Olli Jokinen ($5.25 million) to Calgary and Derek Morris ($3.9 million) to New York. By the time the dust had settled, the Coyotes had acquired a bushel of draft picks and prospects, along with youngsters in defenceman Matthew Lombardi (from Calgary), forward Scottie Upshall (from Philly) and Winnipeg's Nigel Dawes (from the Rangers).

This sort of cost-cutting/forward thinking may pay off handsomely for the fans of the Coyotes in the city where they are eventually relocated. The Lightning may not be going anywhere, but when you're selling season tickets for as low as $239 dollars (US$5.69 a game), you've got to eat some balogna, right?

Big Picture No. 3: How circumstances and job vulnerability collide. Consider the plight of the Calgary Flames and New York Rangers, where respective GMs Darryl Sutter and Glen Sather are arguably running out of chances. The Flames haven't won a playoff series since the 2004-05 lockout, while the Rangers have been a floundering outfit for years.

So the deadline arrives and go figure that it's Sutter and Sather who make the most noise; the Flames acquiring Jokinen and defenceman Jordan Leopold (from Colorado), while Sather grabbed Leafs centre Nik Antropov and Morris. Throw in plucking Sean Avery off the waiver wire and you can see the Rangers are in a full-on panic.

You see, these events don't happen by accident. Look at Burke, who can afford to do very little, getting second-rounders for both Antropov and utility forward Dominic Moore (to Buffalo) and get lauded in the process. That's the luxury of circumstance.

Burke knows he's got an infinite bank of goodwill and patience right now while Sather and Sutter don't have to be told the peasants are getting their pitchforks.

"We'll get this sorted out," Burke assured the masses after making his team worse short-term. "I didn't think it was going to be an easy or quick process, and it's not gonna be... General managers don't view snapshots as far as where the organization is going," he concluded. "We're looking at the movie. We want to see the guy ride off on the white horse with the girl and have a parade."

A movie is exactly that, a big picture show, which brings us back to our theme of dusting the fingerprints of even non-deals for clues. Perhaps the biggest story of the trading deadline is what didn't happen.

After all, it was widely suspected that Jay Bouwmeester's days as a Florida Panther were going to end, since the talented young defenceman is set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer. The Panthers chose to keep Bouwmeester because trading him now may have been the last straw for the dwindling number of fans.

Besides that, it appears they're desperate for playoff revenue. How desperate? They're probably going to let one of the finest young defenceman in the game walk away for nothing rather than risk not making the playoffs now and alienate their fans further.

Big Picture? Let's just say Gil Grissom knows a corpse when he sees one.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 5, 2009 C1