Ramblings: Trades, trading, trade-trade-trade. Trade? Trade! (Mar.1)

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Minor Deals:

Columbus acquires Kyle Quincey from New Jersey for Dalton Prout

Florida acquires Adam Wilcox from Tampa Bay for Mike McKenna. Wilcox is actually an underrated prospect goaltender and has some upside to be a backup in a couple of years

Chicago acquires Johnny Oduya from Dallas for prospect Mark McNeill and a conditional 4th rounder

Montreal acquires Dwight King from Los Angeles for a conditional 4th rounder

Montreal acquires Steve Ott from Detroit for a conditional 6th rounder – this team is toughening up!

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It’s the NHL’s Trade Deadline Day! A national holiday for fantasy hockey owners everywhere. Come on, admit it – you took the day off, didn’t ya? Didn’t ya?

I’m locked right here behind my desk ready to break down trades as they come. I’ve done this for 11 years now so you know my track record: pretty quick, pretty thorough. So keep checking in throughout the day for the fantasy impact of each deal. Steve Laidlaw and Ian Gooding are also on standby.

The site will be sluggish at times today, I apologize for that. I had hoped to be one the new server by now. But it wasn’t meant to be! At least the forum is on the new server – so at least that won’t get bogged down. Oddly enough, Frozen Pool is quick right now too. Just the main DobberHockey and DobberProspects sites that are giving some trouble.

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Twelve, count’em, 12 games on the slate on Tuesday night, because there are only two games Wednesday. It’s the first time that I can remember where there was such a light schedule on Deadline Day. So even the NHL considers it a holiday, I guess.

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Happy to see Pavel Buchnevich get sent down. He needs to get in games. I’d rather see him play in the NHL, but he wasn’t playing so this is best. Twenty other teams would see him flourishing right now, but the Rangers are too deep and they have set lines. They know what they have for next year.

Henrik Lundqvist gave up another four goals…so nine in the last two games. His SV% is down to 0.911.

Chris Kreider was injured early in the Rangers game, but returned for the second period. Looked like a groin and I don’t think he was back to full health so watch for that.

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Kevin Shattenkirk made his Washington debut. Here were the defense pairings:

Not the greatest of partners, but the other two pairings were pretty much locks. Shattenkirk saw 64% of the PP time as the lone defenseman, plus an additional 21% of PP time alongside John Carlson, which was 2:07 in all. The one PPG that was scored was during the Carlson-Shattenkirk (two righties) pairing.

Strangely enough, every other offensive defenseman for Washington picked up a point. Except Shattenkirk. Dmitry Orlov had a point, ditto for Carlson. Matt Niskanen had two.

Tom Wilson was moved up to the top line and played a season high 19:34 of ice time. Perhaps as a reward for scoring goals in two consecutive games while dishing out 10 hits and five shots on goal. He was held pointless though.

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The re-tooled Wild held on for a high-scoring win. After the Jets tied the game at five, Bruce Boudreau pulled Darcy Kuemper and put in Devan Dubnyk. The Wild then scored. Here were the line combos with Martin Hanzal, Ryan White in the lineup (and the two mumps guys out):

Two assists for Hanzal in his second game with the Wild. Ryan White has three points in the two games. The two of them, early on, are making management look good. But White is out there for his hits (about three per game) and he had just two of them in those two games combined.

I don’t know what more to say about Mikael Granlund. Talk about coming into his own. And this guy started the year with nine points in 17 games? Since then he has 50 points in 44 games! He’s made Mikko Koivu fantasy relevant again when Koivu was on the precipice of being waiver fodder. I can remember in the summer, shortly after he was hired, Boudreau was raving about how he wanted to try Granlund on the wing with Koivu and thought it could really work well. Do you think it did?

Ryan Suter (I almost wrote “Gary” – I’m old) was hammered into the boards by Paul Postma and stayed down for a while. He played a bit of the five-minute power play…but then left the game for good late in the first. Boudreau said “don’t know yet”, and the Wild stance is “we’ll know more tomorrow”.

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Philip Danault is pointless in six games since Claude Julien became head coach, despite playing about 19 minutes per game. He’s still playing with Max Pacioretty and Alexander Radulov, but he’s on a short leash now because he’s never really established himself (yet) as a scoring-line player. And with a new coach, he won’t have forever to do it.

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From Elias Sports – Most points by players aged 40+:

Gordie Howe: 268

Jaromir Jagr: 265

Teemu Selanne: 197

Mark Recchi: 171

Johnny Bucyk: 144

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Alexander Burmistrov was stretchered off after this hit:

With Hanzal gone, and with Arizona getting  a ton of power plays last night, we got a great look at which players are benefitting and how the PP units are being used.

The first unit had: Doan – Domi – Dvorak with DeAngelo and Ekman-Larsson

Second unit had: Holland-Perlini-Vrbata with DeAngelo and Goligoski

Eight of those nine players saw over four minutes of PP time, with Perlini seeing 3:38. So the first and second units are more like a 1A and 1B. Coach Dave Tippett is getting a feel for things for next year, so this is Holland’s (who scored a goal) and Perlini’s chance to make a good impression.

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Geez, for the fourth time in five games Filip Forsberg tallied three points. He is now officially on pace to finish with 64 points, exactly matching last season (and he had 63 the season prior). Wow! That market correction had to be the fastest one I’ve ever seen. He was way – way – behind any kind of pace that would be reasonable for him. No longer.

Beware of Pekka Rinne. He allowed four goals last night – and that is the fourth time in five games that he’s done so (and fifth time in seven games). He’s been getting W’s thanks to a certain player (to protect his anonymity we’ll call him Filip F.) on his team scoring like a maniac. But when that player, Filip F., cools off then Rinne could be badly exposed here.

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Shayne Gostisbehere has five points in his last four games and has taken 15 shots on goal in his last six. Four of his five points have come on the power play. It’s early, but this is the Gostisbehere we’ve been waiting for – and he’s still due for a massive market correction.

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The other slumping young defenseman – John Klingberg – is also turning it up. He has five points in his last three contests and is a plus-6 in his last four.

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Ben Bishop played great in his Kings’ debut, stopping 28 of 30 shots. But he took the loss. And that’s the story of goalies in LA over the past few years: win or lose, they keep the goals down. When Bishop gets a start, which is probably going to be about half the time now, he’s going to see a big improvement in his numbers.

Brian Elliott won his fourth straight game and has allowed just 12 goals in his last six games (170 shots). I think he’s back to ‘stud goalie’. Calgary defensemen blocked 17 shots in front of him last night.

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Josh Leivo – get him while he’s hot. Can’t say how long it will last, but look who he’s seeing time with:

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Follow our Trade Tracker here – and get the scoop on all the trades from a fantasy standpoint (impact on line combos, PP, etc.)

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Update: First minor trade of the day – Montreal acquired Steve Ott from Detroit for a sixth-round draft pick. That one isn't worthy of a trade analysis. Just the Habs adding some more grit. But if he's in the lineup, we'll probably see Sven Andrighetto out of the lineup more.