Columnist image

Host, TSN The Reporters with Dave Hodge

| Archive

Thumbs down to the biggest trade of the hockey season--Brett Lawrie and prospects for Josh Donaldson. Thumbs down because the biggest trade of the hockey season is a baseball trade. Ask 30 NHL general managers about trades and they all say the same thing--trades are difficult, if not impossible to make. But why? It used to be that trades couldn't be made because full contracts had to be swapped, but now, some of a traded player's money can stay on the books of the team he leaves. There are too many no-trade clauses, but the general managers tie their own hands when they offer them and surely they could try harder to get players to waive them. It's all too easy for general managers to wait for the trade deadline. They don’t know till then if they should be "buyers" or "sellers", and they think by then they will find willing partners who must sell and who wish to buy.

NHL GMs are always "working the phones." They say they're open to "any deal that could make us better." They might get particularly interested in making a trade that will delay the firing of a coach, and then they realize the coach has to be fired anyway. Admittedly, making trades isn’t as easy as it sounds on sports radio. It does take a certain boldness to make a significant trade. Where's the boldness in the NHL?

Thumbs down to the Montreal Canadiens, whose general manager Marc Bergevin was praised when he unloaded the contracts of Travis Moen and Rene Bourque for two players unsigned beyond this season, Sergei Gonchar and Bryan Allen. Well, Bergevin must tackle a larger task to maintain his reputation as one of the NHL's shrewdest front-office bosses--he has to decide what's wrong with his team, because something is wrong.

The standings say otherwise when they place the Habs at the top of the Eastern Conference, and the 16 wins that got them there include some impressive performances. But the seven losses in regulation time are a large gravy stain on the CH crest. In those seven games, the Canadiens have managed to score a grand total of four goals. It looks like a misprint, and so does the number of goals allowed in those 60-minute defeats--32. Bergevin has shown he can get rid of contracts, but now he has to identify and get rid of a problem, whatever it is.