Deadlines...

To Deal or not to Deal

With the arrival of trade deadline day, I figured it was time for me to ignore one deadline to concentrate on another. The last couple of months I've been working towards a huge deadline at work, where I've been asked to do 3 years worth of work in only 6 months...

So you'll have to excuse me for not chiming in lately, what with working overtime and still playing hockey five days a week. My mind just wasn't into it. I could probably have written something while watching the games, but at that point I was just content to sit there and not think...

So over at Five Hole Fanatics, Kent has a little contest going to see who can guess the first player that Darryl Sutter trades for leading up to the deadline. Now this 'contest' started over a month ago, but as everybody knows there hasn't been a whole lot of action on the trade front since then...

The major problem being that there isn't a whole lot of separation when it comes to the playoff bubble and the teams at the bottom of the rankings. At one point in the Western Conference a few weeks ago, the 15th place team was only 5 points out of a playoff spot. So most teams are still trying to figure out if they are a buyer or a seller...

Even now, there is only a 10 point difference in the Western Conference between St Louis in 12th (64 points) and Vancouver in 5th (74 points). Even Colorado at the bottom of the West is only 11 points out of 7th place, but with only 18 games remaining and that many teams left to jump, they are essentially out of it...

The Eastern Conference is a little bit easier to figure out, with a bottom tier of 5 teams including the Islanders, Thrashers, Lightning, Senators, and Leafs all being pretty much out of it at this point. But that still leaves 10 teams vying for 8 spots with only a month to go in the season, and there is only 9 points separating Buffalo (69 points) and Philadelphia (78 points)...

If I had to make a decision in regards to buyers, sellers, and standing pat, the lists would look like this...

Standing pat: Sharks, Red Wings, Bruins, Blackhawks, and Devils...

Sellers: Islanders, Thrashers, Lightning, Senators, Leafs, Avalanche, Coyotes, Kings (okay, those were the easy ones), Blues, and Ducks (they are on the bubble and have been dropping a lot lately, not to mention that they have the fewest games left)...

Buyers: Flames, Canucks, Blue Jackets, Oilers, Predators, Stars, Wild, Capitals, Flyers, Canadiens, Panthers, Rangers, Penguins, Hurricanes, and Sabres...