Courtesy Alan Caldwell:

Thursday, January 10, 2008

D-Day is here

It's Deadline Day; 3pm Mountain time is the cutoff. I'll post today's deals as they are announced or leak out; if history is any indication, the league will try to keep a lid on things so that they can claim some glory by announcing ALL the deals in one press release sometime after 3pm. In fact, going by past years, it will be sometime after 5pm MST before they get around to it. No thanks....fortunately some teams still announce their own deals when they happen.

Bunch o' trades yesterday....

Swift Current acquires overage defenceman Bretton Stamler from Edmonton for a 2008 3rd round bantam pick. To open up an overage spot for him, they then trade overage defenceman R.J. LaRochelle to Vancouver for future considerations. I would suspect the future considerations in this deal are based on how many games LaRochelle - who is recovering from a concussion and has a history of them - is able to play for Vancouver.

I'm a bit surprised that Vancouver took LaRochelle, considering that they were apparently in the Jeff May talks right up until the end when they were beaten out by Lethbridge. When healthy, LaRochelle is a quality defenceman but I would think a contender would not want to take the chance on his injury problems. Heck, that's why Swift Current swapped LaRochelle out for Stamler in the first place. There were other quality (and healthy) overage d-men out there that the Giants could have still pursued, such as Matt Swaby in Edmonton and Nick Holden in Chilliwack. Although, I suppose the devil will be building snowmen on his front lawn in July before the Giants and Bruins make a trade, after all that has gone on between those two teams in the last year.

In other moves, Kootenay picked up a depth player on their blueline with the acquisition of 19 year old Zach Sim from Prince Albert for a 2008 5th round pick. And that was just one of four trades made by the Raiders yesterday; besides the Sim and May deals, they also sent 19 year old forward Brent Ottmann to Kelowna for a conditional 2009 draft pick - Ottmann was sent home by the Raiders early in the season so this is a chance for him to get back into the league with a different team. I would guess the pick depends on whether Ottmann plays for Kelowna this year and/or whether he plays as an overage next year. And the 4th trade saw the Raiders send 19 year old forward Ryan DePape to Regina for 19 year old forward Jared Jagow and a 2008 3rd round pick. That's the 3rd time that same 3rd round pick has been traded in the last ten days.....the Pats sent it to Red Deer in the Watt deal, got it back in the Ofukany/Jackson deal, and now send it to Prince Albert.

One other rumoured deal, the Robin Figren to Regina deal, is apparently off. The Regina Leader-Post is reporting that Figren has refused to go to Regina, for reasons unspecified. Perhaps he is hoping that his old team, Calgary, will pick him up today instead. Otherwise, he is destined to finish his WHL career on a non-playoff team now.

Whole bunch of G.M.'s quoted in their local papers today with the standard deadline day boilerplate: no, we don't expect to make moves. We like our team, should be a quiet day, blabbity blabbity blah. Don't be fooled. Every year all the G.M.'s say this, and every year there's 10-15 trades made on deadline day.