Sens at Land’s End

The trade deadline has now passed. The nameless organization made one deal, getting Martin Lapointe from Chicago for a 6th round draft pick. Lapointe is the kind of guy who’s expected to provide leadership, which is something they need. They did not manage to get a goalie, sadly, but I never thought that was likely. So, no drastic improvements but no getting worse either. Like that’s possible.

However, I think two of their main competitors — Pittsburgh and Montreal — really screwed themselves over so that’s good news. Pittsburgh got Marian Hossa from Atlanta. Hossa is definitely a great player (at one time my favourite player, when he wore the Roman jersey), but I think they gave up way too much to get him and I don’t see it working out well for them at all. Montreal, meanwhile, seem to have thought they were going to get Hossa, and they traded Cristobal Huet to Washington for a 2nd round pick, which is totally ridiculous and it kind of makes me want to cry to think that a good goalie like Huet was available for such a small price and the bad team is still stuck with the same two incompetents. But anyway, it seems that Montreal traded Huet because they thought that to get Hossa they would have to take back one of Atlanta’s goalies, but then Hossa went to Pittsburgh so now Montreal is left with only Carey Price — a very talented goalie, no doubt, but still just a rookie — to tend goal for them in the playoffs. The Hossa trade happened with only about 5 minutes left before the deadline so I guess they didn’t have time to correct the situation. They can’t be very happy right now. Fans to riot?

There was some speculation that Washington wanted Huet because they were going to try to trade Olaf Kolzig, maybe to the horrible evil team, but Kolzig refused to waive his no trade clause. If that rumour was true, then … damn you Kolzig. I don’t like you anymore!

Overall most of the big moves were made by Western teams, which means whoever wins the East may get dismantled come final time anyway. I think Washington is maybe the most improved team in the East though. They’ve already beaten — one could even say slaughtered — the stupid team four times this season and I would hate to play them in the playoffs. They got Sergei Fedorov from Columbus, and I look forward to seeing him play with Ovechkin. A Russian dynamic duo! Or, trio, if they play them with Alexander Semin. But the other teams in the Northeast division, which is currently led by the lazy dumbasses, all got worse or stayed the same. This could enable the evil team to continue to suck yet still win their division. Huzzah.