Brian Lee for Matt Gilroy. Clearly Ottawa is now a Cup contender. They were also considering a deal for a bale of hay, which would have been more mobile than Matt Carkner.
And so ended the definition of anticlimactic programming, as TSN’s entire synergistic strategy – to become about hockey at all times – exploded in their face. Using their “DAN-DAN-DAN / DAN-DAN-DAN!” sound effect every time there was a trade was adorable, especially when the trades were THIS BAD. I think Bob MacKenzie was playing Jet Pack Joyride on his Blackberry.
Most surprising of course were the teams that really, really should have done something, or at least more, and who sat pat. I’m not talking about the contenders, though I am surprised that Philadelphia didn’t do something else, if only because they feel a compulsion to constantly trade and sign players. I’m talking mostly about Edmonton, Minnesota, Montreal, Carolina. I can understand Columbus not trading Rick Nash, because they absolutely must get that trade right. But why on earth, say, Buffalo wouldn’t take whatever the hell they could for their army of pending UFAs is totally beyond me. Maybe after Nashville gave up a first for Paul freaking Gaustad they started asking for too much. That’s like Ottawa getting a first round pick for Chris Neil.
Anyway, I mostly like that Ottawa didn’t do much, though again, without those delicious second round picks – the perfect trade deadline resource – what were they going to do anyway? Turris is Ottawa’s big mid-season acquisition, and it’s mostly worked out. Ben Bishop is here now too, so Ottawa got taller I guess.
Welcome To Your Karlsson Years 
Yeah it was boring…what’s funny is that trade deadline did have a lot of stuff happen but the fatal flaw with the coverage is that it just didn’t all happen on that one particular DAY. If the Carter for Jack Johnson + entire cast of Muppet Babies deal alone happened on trade deadline day that would have been a big story. Or Cammelerri for Bourque or Rundblad +2nd Turris if you wanna get Senzie about it. But those deals didn’t happen on that day because (several) GMs are too smart than to do all of their big business under time constraints on one day. As easy as it is to make fun of tradedeadline coverage and trust me I LOVE making fun Sportsnet, I will give TSN a bit of a pass b/c I find they do their job but balance it by not taking it too seriously (see: Everything that Onrait and O’Toole did yesterday/ James Duthie’s constant ribbing, Cricket sound effects – lets be fair its not just the DAN DAN DAN one, and of course Marc Crawford miming blowing his brains/porcupine hair out from boredom)
I think the reason we’ve seen the coverage get ramped up the last couple of years is because of the emergence of social media as scoop breaker. I know I am blowing your minds with this statement but…what can I say…STATEMENTS, YOU GUYS. You cant call yourself Canada’s sports leader and then not cover trade deadline day as much as your competitor or not want to break the story before they do for that matter. They are handcuffed by the need to at least compete with twitter and other sports networks to announce and analyze to death the news of trades first. As hit and mostly miss as the daylong coverage is, people do still watch it. I watched it here and there and you don’t get ratings for @darrendreger trending alone. They try to combine being a television network with the constant presence of social media for the day and I don’t blame them for trying this clumsy hybrid system. Hockey is the big ticket item in this country and as Canadian sports networks, I think deciding to show this all day makes more sense and probably gains way more viewers than the regular Live from Gstaad! It’s the Dr. Oetker’s Pizza Presents The Western European Gyoïflööndzur Cup of Alpine Skiing Men’s Qualifiers! daytime programming that they’d otherwise be showing Monday morning/afternoon. I have definitely seen it hyped up an unnecessary amount and have definitely heard stuff like “Trade deadline day is only two months away” uttered on TSN/SNET many times which is dumb because St. Swithun’s Day is almost 5 months away, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to get excited about it (though I admittedly am!) but at this point in time I don’t really see what the alternative there is for a Canadian sports network.
#farts
How the fuck does Buffalo get the same for a UFA Gaustad that Ottawa got for Fisher who was locked up for two more years?
Maybe Fisher’s two more years were seen as a difficult thing to take on? Gaustad is only making $2.5MM or something, so if he doesn’t work out he can walk. If Fisher started sucking – and he wasn’t having a great year in Ottawa when he was traded – then they’re stuck paying almost $15MM more bucks. But yeah, this year was super weird. I totally thought we’d see more teams taking flyers on expensive, underperforming players for conditional 7th round picks or whatever.