Kevin Dupont

Something’s gotta give.

Don’t you think?  Just a little?  

We all like trades. Whatever our sport of choice. Admit it, it’s the general manager in all of us, pulling apart our rosters, wheeling and dealing, robbing our competitor of that perfect puck-moving defenseman, deftly plucking that yet-to-be discovered 40-goal scorer from an AHL roster. The next Stanley Cup is always just one roster tweak away, right?

In the “new” NHL, though, the trading life is different, and far too dormant.

The night of Dec. 18, a stroke before midnight, the NHL went into its traditional holiday roster freeze. Until the opening minute of Dec. 28, at 12:01 a.m., the entire league was issued a No Trade Clause. It happens every season, allowing players nine days not to worry about getting the telephone call that could tip their lives upside down when they’re only two bites into their holiday ham.  

In the “old” NHL days, there was no bigger prospect of facing the buzzkill of, say, waking up  on Christmas morn as a proud member of the Canadiens, and going to bed as a Winnipeg Jet.  Boy, talk about indigestion. Not to mention wind chill.

Truth is, these days it seems the league’s roster freeze begins at the start of October and doesn’t thaw until what is now the end-of-February trading deadline (Feb. 26 this season).  

Really, trades? Not only have they all but vanished, but we don’t even talk about the potential of deals anymore. The NHL has become like the NFL in that regard. Other than the early-July blizzard of free-agent signings, about all the roster orchestration we see comes during training camp, and that’s only when kids get shipped back to their junior clubs and coaches figure out their offensive trios and defensive pairings.

Trade rumors, the lifeblood of NHL beat reporters for decads, have gone the way of lava lamps, hula hoops and hard-wired phones. Quaint ideas, but so yesterday.

The last two blockbusters of the modern era might be the Nov. 30, 2005 swap in which the Bruins sent Joe Thornton to San Jose, and the June 23, 2006 move that sent Roberto Luongo from the Panthers to Canucks. The latter deal should be noted with an asterisk, however, becuase it came on the eve of the NHL draft, four days after the ’Canes won the Stanley Cup.  Sorry, to be a bonafide blockbuster, a deal must be made during the season, with enough time left to measure impact, get the dream machine stoked.

Nowadays, other than humdrum minor-league callups and demotions, clubs typically remain status quo with their rosters until the days leading up to, and including, the annual trade deadline. By then, however, at least five clubs have been all but eliminated from postseason play, and another five typically are hanging on a by a frayed skatelace.  

What fun is that? Deals are about dreams, quick fixes, righting wrongs on the fly and, most of all, stoking the rumors and continuing the chatter.

A $6 million unrestricted free agent signing in July has allure, sure, but most hockey fans that week have just begun to thaw out on the beach. And that new guy, no matter how promising, isn’t going to play a game for the “home” team for about another 90 days. Sorry, it says right here in my new tome, “Hockey for Hardheads”, that all unrestricted free agent signings are the doublerunner version of blockbuster deal.

How did this happen? How did we get cast into the no-deal doldrums?

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You guessed it. Money. Specifically ... drumroll here, please ... the new cost-certainty NHL.

In other words, as fans, the salary cap turned out to be a two-hander to our heads.

Two key things have happened because of the cap:

1. GMs, to the point of ridiculousness in some cases, have tied up their best talent with lucrative, long-term deals that contain no-trade clauses. As the months go by, rosters will become increasingly logjammed with highly compensated players who have it written in their contracts that they can’t be dealt, or even reassigned to the minor leagues. If a GM finds he has the wrong mix of players, well, too bad. He signed them, long-term. He granted them the right not to be traded. He’s stuck.

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2. The CBA, at least right now, does not allow a club to “hold” salary when making deals. In other words, if Detroit GM Ken Holland wanted to send Player X to Nashville for Player Y, and the two salaries were out of whack because the Red Wings player was too pricey for David Poile’s liking, Holland is not allowed to keep some of his soon-to-be-ex-player’s salary on the Red Wings books. All deals are straight up, man-for-man, and dollar-for-dollar. A number of GMs, including Anaheim’s Brian Burke, would like to amend this “no hold” stipulation in the CBA, but that won’t happen this season — and possibly never will happen.

It’s all about the money, folks, and that’s nothing new.  

But it’s just one more log tossed into the general fire of things we have to accept, but don’t have to like. For the most part, the team you’ve got is the one you’ll keep, for better or worse. Kinda like a marriage, come to think of it. No trades.