NHL POST TRADE DEADLINE 10 THOUGHTS
NHL General Managers complaining about Kelly McCrimmon and the Vegas Golden Knights exploiting Long Term Injured Reserve only have themselves to blame for what they deem to be a problem. For years, teams have been given a free pass at terming injuries as ‘upper body’ or ‘lower body’ and then being allowed to term the length of time players are out of the line-up as ‘week to week’ or ‘day to day’ or ‘indefinitely’. Seldom do you hear of a specific injury with a specific timeline to come back. If the NHL made this very fundamental change with regards to injury reporting, it would be a lot more challenging for any team to utilize LTIR as a form of vacation time for top stars in order to circumvent the cap. I should also point out that while it seems as though Vegas is the only club doing this, the rule is sitting right there for every team to take advantage of it. It’s not like what the Knights are doing is ‘unfair’.
It also takes two to tango. Calgary GM Craig Conroy did what was best for his team in sending Noah Hanifin to the division rival Knights for minimal return and San Jose GM Mike Grier did what he thought was best for his team in dealing his best player, under contract for 6 more years, for lottery tickets. One should question how long does it take to rebuild when you get rid of a guy who’s supposed to be on your team for 6 more years and is only 29-years-old but that’s a debate for another day aside from the fact here is a perfect example of a team (Sharks) that isn’t the least bit interested in being competitive any time soon. Nevertheless, the Knights can’t exploit the rules all by themselves. They have to have a dance partner and they’ve had no trouble finding them yet rival GMs are complaining.
The media is to blame for a lot of this too. They never press teams on the extent of injuries and many of them run cover for the teams in which the media members are friends with. It’s not getting a lot of publicity, but the Colorado Avalanche have had Gabriel Landeskog out of their lineup for about two years due to a knee injury of some kind. In general terms, it’s been reported that Landeskog is skating but we don’t know if that means he’s ramping up in order to be playoff ready or whether he’s truly rehabbing and will play when truly healthy enough to do so, which could be next week, next month, or next year. I don’t think it will be next week. It would cause cap issues that are unresolveable now that the trade deadline has passed. When asked about Landeskog’s progress, we just get a word salad that tells us nothing and we will find out once the playoffs begin.
I, for one, am not surprised that it’s McCrimmon who is taking advantage of the rules to make his team better. More on that in the next paragraphs but I don’t understand why everyone is up in arms. There are rules in place and the smartest, most competitive General Managers will use those rules the best way they know how in order to make their teams better. This shouldn’t make anyone mad. It should only prove to fans and corporate sponsors that the vast majority of teams simply are not trying as hard as they could to be as good as possible.
From day one, the Knights exposed weaknesses in the rules as well as the shallow minds of other NHL General Managers to ensure they had a top level team. That started with the expansion draft when other teams were more than willing to part with excellent players or top draft picks in order to hang on to certain other players. It’s laughable now but other teams’ GMs should have been fired for acting so foolishly. Anaheim, for example, allowed Vegas to choose Shea Theodore over Sami Vatanen or Josh Manson and made an ill-advised trade. Pittsburgh wanted Marc-Andre Fleury gone so they also gave Vegas a 2nd rounder to choose him. Columbus traded a 1st, 2nd, and William Karlsson to the Knights as compensation for Vegas taking on the dead money contract of David Clarkson. Minnesota watched Alex Tuch and Erik Haula go out the door because Marco Scandella and Matthew Dumba were too important to them. Florida wanted nothing to do with Reilly Smith’s 5-year, $25-million contract so they allowed the Knights to take him and Jonathan Marchessault for a 4th rounder. These trades were always silly as they were made in real time and they are downright ridiculous when you look back on them today. Yet, other NHL teams will tell you it’s the Knights and McCrimmon who are the problem (yes, I know George McPhee was the GM of the Knights when they began play but McCrimmon was an assistant and his fingerprints are all over these moves).
When I worked in Brandon at CKX-TV, it was always a laughing joke amongst a group of us about who McCrimmon would take to the cleaners when making a WHL trade. My favorite was Kirby Law from Lethbridge for Jason Boyd. Law put up 78-points in 49-games (he got injured) as a 20-year-old while Boyd never scored more than 10-goals in a season and, with all due respect to him, anyone who had watched Boyd play more than a couple of times knew this was a fleecing. There are countless other examples but most of the deals are ones in which only long time Brandon fans would be able to relate to. It was very, very rare for McCrimmon to end up on the wrong side of a trade. I don’t know why anyone would even take his calls, to be honest. You are just asking to be embarrassed.
I’ve mentioned in previous articles that I’ve written that my relationship with McCrimmon and head coach Bob Lowes was up and down but ended on a very frosty note and, to this day, I don’t think either of them would have much use for me if I was still in the media circle. That’s fine, I deserve some of their disdain for sure and could have handled certain issues and situations much better than I did. I believe the one such issue that caused the relationship to sour beyond repair came in 2001 when I was a media member that was part of exposing McCrimmon using a WHL loophole to his advantage, all the while misleading the Brandon media. WHL teams were allowed 3 overage (20-year-olds) and 2 imports (Europeans) on their roster. The Wheats had goalie Jamie Hodson, captain Brett Girard, and forwards Aaron Goldade and Jan Fadrny on their roster, putting them one over the limit. Fadrny was also one of three imports with Milan Bartovic and Jiri Jakes. It only made sense Fadrny would be traded so that two issues could be solved with one deal. Every other team in the WHL also knew this and, for a change, McCrimmon would be forced to make a bad trade because of his position of weakness. But, no. Instead, McCrimmon made a secret deal with Tri-City to send the rights to Girard to the Americans. Girard, it’s important to note, was injured and going to miss significant time. Once healthy, he’d go back to Brandon. Handshake agreement and it buys McCrimmon more time. There was no formal announcement on the Girard to Tri-City trade and Girard, himself, never left his billet’s in Brandon. He stayed in town the entire time. Daily, media members were inquiring with the Wheat King office about a trade and the league deadline for getting your roster compliant had passed so it made no sense as to how Brandon was able to, constantly, be over the overage and import limit. I recall there was a point where we were all told the Wheat Kings had been given a special extension because of the unique situation concerning Girard’s injury and Hodson’s late arrival from Toronto Maple Leafs camp but then one evening a reporter from BC called the Brandon Sun and asked about why Girard was showing up on the Tri-City protected list and from there everything got exposed and the league took subsequent steps to close the loophole that allowed teams to ‘stash’ players on other teams’ protected lists. As it turned out, McCrimmon did deal Fadrny and Bart Rushmer to Kelowna for Nolan Yonkman, a big and physical blueliner who didn’t put up the numbers Fadrny did but it was still a very successful trade considering the predicament. Yonkman gave the team an element they were sorely lacking, was popular in the room, and went on to play a bit in the NHL. Neither Fadrny or Rushmer did. At the time, I didn’t blame McCrimmon for using the loophole and still don’t. Despite how he may feel about me, I regard him as the smartest man in hockey that I’ve ever come across and how he’s running the Golden Knights only affirms this in my mind. He should be any owner’s first choice to run a hockey team and it’s not even close for second.
One criticism I’ve heard on the Golden Knights is that the management isn’t loyal. Nothing could be further from the truth. Brandon native Daren Millard works for the team in the media department. Lowes has a job in the front office, former Wheats captain Ryan Craig coaches in the AHL for their farm team and Mark Stone was a long time Wheat King player as well, as was goalie Logan Thompson. The scouting staff is littered with people connected to McCrimmon from his WHL days. From his own son to former fellow GMs Kelly Kisio and Tim Speltz to Brad McEwen to Craig Cunningham. So, loyalty should not be in question here. While it’s true the Knights make a lot of trades, that’s all part of the business and how the league is set up. You HAVE to say your frequent good-byes if you want to remain near the top of the league year after year. It’s not personal.
Unrelated note, but I love what the Winnipeg Jets have done. Getting Tyler Toffoli to bolster their top six forwards and adding Colin Miller for veteran depth on the back end is precisely what the team needs. I believe the Jets have never been as good as they are now and they’ve never had a better chance to win it all than they do now. This includes their run in 2018 that ended in the Western Conference finals to Vegas. It was, somewhat, perplexing to see GM Kevin Cheveldayoff make these moves because there is no question the Jets will make the playoffs. At last year’s season-exiting press conference, Cheveldayoff was quite clear that he felt making the playoffs was the real skill and any success teams may have in the postseason is more a fluke than anything else. These additions signal a change in his thinking.
It could be too late for the New Jersey Devils but I wish more teams would do what they did. They punted their current goalie situation and brought in two new ones without it costing too much. Goaltending, unless you are getting one of the top five in the league, can be such a crapshoot. Just because one doesn’t play well in a certain environment doesn’t mean he will play the same somewhere else. The Devils have nothing to lose by adding Jake Allen and Kappo Kahkonen aside from the fact they may run out of time even in the event the team gets hot.