With the NHL trade deadline passing today, we seemed destined for the lowest number of trades in the last decade with around 1 hour remaining. For those familiar with D-Day, the rules state that the paperwork must be submitted to the NHL offices BEFORE the deadline at 3pm. Once a trade is submitted, the league will review them, and deem them approved (or rejected for various reasons). Once approved, the details are often leaked to the media and eventually to rabid hockey nuts like myself. The entire end-to-end process is typically quite fast, but you can imagine around 3pm on D-Day the numbers of trades would cause a back-up of paperwork. As a result, there were a large number of trades reported well after the 3pm cutoff.
The complete listing of trades can be found at TSN's Trade Center Site in reverse order, with the last trade finalized at 4:18pm. Due to certain embargo laws, I won't go into details here, but will point out a few key highlights that included my Detroit Red Wings showing unflappable confidence in the current roster and opting to stay out of the trade pool, the Calgary Flames trading away some high draft picks and speedy forward Matt Lombardi to secure the services of Olli Jokinen & Jordan Leopold, and honorable mention goes to the Toronto Maple Leafs for securing 4 draft picks and adding 2 more goaltenders to the stable. (Toskala, Joseph, Pogge... please welcome Martin Gerber and Olaf Kolzig) Clearly the latter was a salary cap saver for Tampa and resulted in a 4th rounder as a sign of good faith.
All in all, an entertaining day once all was said and done.
Final totals were: 22 Trades, 45 Players changed teams, and 21 Draft Picks were exchanged.
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