Trade Deadline!
Where were you Monday, February 28, at 3:00 P.M. EST? I don’t know about you, but i know exactly what i was doing. I was at work at Carlos and Gabbys Brooklyn filling hundreds of little cups with sauces. All of a sudden i realized it had happened… The NHL trade deadline had passed moments earlier. The trade deadline is the second most important day on the NHL calendar, right behind the NHL Draft. Since i was at work I was unable to follow the day’s events and had no idea if my team had made a big move. So i texted my buddy.
“?”
“Brad Winchester for a draft pick.”
SPLATT!!! I dropped a cup of sauce on the floor. Okay, so i didn’t drop any sauce, but i felt like i should have. We traded away another player for a draft pick? This was not the news i was hoping for. In the NHL, there is rarely a team that goes deep into the playoffs without some help from new additions along the way. If you’re a General Manager in the NHL and you think your team has a shot to go all the way, then you better be ready to go shopping. Every year, at the deadline, there are teams that are buyers and teams that are sellers. Buyers are teams with good records that are looking to bolster there lineups with either new young talent or seasoned veterans that know how to win. Sellers are teams that know that they are pretty much out of it and are looking to the future. This trade meant my team was a seller. Just like that, the season was over. We were not gonna win the Cup. This trade was a statement… it’s just not our year. The trade deadline isn’t always a bearer of bad news, though. Take Raymond Bourque, for example. Bourque started his NHL career with the Boston Bruins in 1979. He continued to play for Boston for the next twenty-one seasons, never winning a cup. The Bruins had fallen out of playoff contention and on March 6, 2000, the Bruins announced that they had traded Raymond Bourque to the Colorado Avalanche. The Avs were battling for playoff position at the time. The following year, Borque helped Colorado make it to the Stanley Cup Finals. Finally, after twenty-two seasons, Avs fans, Boston fans, and hockey fans all over, watched Joe Sakic hand Lord Stanley’s Cup to a tearful Ray Bourque for the first skate around the ice. After so many years trying to win in Boston, and almost giving up, Ray was given new hope, thanks to a trade at the deadline. So, yes, the trade deadline brought bad news for me this year. But as teams gear up for the home stretch of the regular season, and the painfully exhausting, but, oh, so exciting month and a half of playoff hockey, all i am left to say is “There is always next year…..just ask Raymond Bourque.”
I almost forgot to talk about the team jerseys worn at the Heritage Classic. Montreal wore their regular white, blue and red away-jerseys with a Heritage Classic patch on the chest. Boring!!! Calgary, on the other hand, wore a design based off the original Calgary Tigers sweater from 1927. The Tigers were the first professional sports team in Calgary and were part of the Western Canadian Hockey League. At first i didn’t like the ketchup and mustard look that the red and yellow stripes had, but as the game went on and the sky drew dark with nightfall, the jerseys grew on me. They were nothing special, but the game itself was another story. Great showing for Canadian hockey.
(Stay tuned next time to find out who Lord Stanley actually was.)
