Will Blake Wheeler ever catch up to the Stanley Cup?

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This article was published 26/02/2016 (3564 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PITTSBURGH — There are winners and losers every year at the NHL trading deadline and Blake Wheeler knows perhaps better than anyone how a deadline deal can instantly turn you from one of the former to one of the latter.

Wheeler was a member of the Boston Bruins in February, 2011 when he got a call just before the deadline telling him he’d been dealt to the Atlanta Thrashers.

The deal saw Wheeler and Mark Stuart shipped to Atlanta in exchange for Rich Peverley and Boris Valabik, a lopsided deal in favour of the Thrashers (and, ultimately, Winnipeg Jets) the website Bleacher Report this week proclaimed among the top 10 deadline deals of the past decade in the NHL.

But it also came at a big cost for Wheeler. Although drafted by the Phoenix Coyotes, Wheeler had spent his entire career to that point in a Bruins uniform. So it stung, to say the least, when just a few months after he was traded, Wheeler’s former Bruins teammates hoisted a Stanley Cup.

Wheeler could only watch and wonder “what if?”

“Watching a team you played with for three years go on to win the Stanley Cup without you, that hurts. Certainly,” Wheeler told me Thursday in Dallas.

“It was really tough at the time. And, as I’ve gotten older, it’s continued to get tougher.”

A few hours after we had that conversation, it got even tougher for Wheeler. A man who lost a Stanley Cup ring in a deadline deal in 2011 could only watch helplessly again this week as he lost his captain and a close friend in Andrew Ladd in another deal near the deadline.

Wheeler also lost something else increasingly precious to him in the trade that sent Ladd from the Jets to the Chicago Blackhawks — he lost time.

At age 29, Wheeler knows any actuary will tell him he’s already most likely on the back end of his career and the years he’s got left to try and get back that Stanley Cup ring he lost in the deal with the Bruins are beginning to count down.

And with the deal that sent Ladd to Chicago, whatever chance Wheeler has of getting that ring just got even more remote.

Exchanging the 30-year-old Ladd for 21-year-old Marko Dano and some future draft picks not only robs the Jets of the only captain they’ve ever had, it also makes them the second youngest team in the NHL.

Which is to say a Jets team for which the future was supposed to be this season after the franchise’s first playoff appearance last year, is again building for a more distant future that to Wheeler must look like a tiny speck on the horizon.

Wheeler hinted as much Thursday night. Just hours after he told me how the Stanley Cup that got away has gotten harder for him to take as the years have unfurled, he returned to the subject of setbacks at the end of a very long day that saw Ladd traded and the club announce No. 1 centre Bryan Little was done for the season with a back injury.

“It leaves a huge void in our room, in our lineup, in a lot of different ways,” said Wheeler. “It’s difficult circumstances. But those things seem to happen at inopportune times.”

They do to Wheeler, anyway.

It’s a cruel twist of fate that in what is a career season for Wheeler, he now finds himself as far from that elusive Stanley Cup ring as he’s perhaps ever been.

With his 17th goal Thursday night in Dallas, Wheeler tied Ladd and Little for the team lead in goals this season. He will likely take over that lead sometime soon and probably never look back, now Ladd and Little are no longer in the equation.

And at some point, Wheeler is also likely going to get a tap on the shoulder and a ‘C’ on his chest as the overwhelming favourite to take over the Jets captaincy from Ladd.

With three more seasons after this one left on his contract, Wheeler will lead the Jets into a very uncertain future. In the meantime, he will watch with keen interest as Ladd tries to win another Stanley Cup in Chicago this spring.

The Jets will receive a third-round draft pick in 2018 from Chicago if the Blackhawks and Ladd go on to win what could be a third Stanley Cup ring for Ladd in 2016.

Wheeler, meanwhile, is still looking for his first and surely wondering when, if ever, it will be his turn.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek