Wow what a day to be a Flames fan/hockey fan. Trade deadline, Canadians second Christmas and as bad as it sounds I think I was more excited for this than I was for Christmas, sorry family and friends. Anyways lets get to it. Heading into today in no way did I think the Flames were going to come out as the day's winners/make the biggest impact. I thought they needed to add another puck moving defensemen and other than that be relatively quiet after that and after they snatched Calgary boy Lawrence Nycholat yesterday, I had even more doubt that the phones were going to be busy in Sutter's office. Man was I caught off guard like many other Flames fans and Sutter really didn't waste time either. Both of Calgary's big deals were announced before 11 am our time and were in the first 5 trades of the whole day.
Sutter started it off by acquiring a familiar face, Jordan Leopold. Leopold came from Colorado with the Flames sending recent waiver wire pick-up Nycholat, prospect D Ryan Wilson and a 2nd round draft pick in return. Leopold is the puck-moving defensemen the Flames needed and were looking for. He became an even more valuable pick-up after recent injury to Giordano has him out for the season. Leopold was awesome for the Flames when he played here and truly played his best hockey here. Since his departure the injury bug has haunted him even more than in Calgary and has set his career back a bit. I love this trade for the Flames they gave up barely anything and now we have more than enough depth on the back end. The only question I have with this is does Keenan pair Leopold with Reg, with them having so much success as a pair before or does Keenan leave Aucoin with Reg with them being the Flames best pairing since they have been paired together. Should be interesting
Then Sutter pulled the biggest move of the day. After probably 2ish years of being rumored to be coming here, Sutter finally accomplished acquiring Olli Jokinen. It was a much steeper price then Leopold as expected as the Flames gave up Lombo, Prust and a conditional 1st round draft pick(either 2009 or 2010, Calgary's choice). As much as I like this trade, there are some things I dont like about it. I hate to see Lombo and his awesome speed go and with Jokinen being under contract next season for 5.25 mill, I can almost guarantee unless he takes a huge home town discount, that Cammalleri wont be back next season. I love Cammalleri, he is one of my favourite hockey players so I hope there is still a way to re-sign him in the summer. Anyways we will worry about that later. Jokinen finally gives the Flames a true 'Sutter #1 center'. Jokinen brings his ability to score and produce offense while give the Flames some size down the middle that they really have never had before. Jokinen has never played in the playoffs before but with the leadership from Iggy and Reg that doesnt worry me one bit. Jokinen gave credit to Keenan in his interview today with reviving his career, so Keenan obviously knows how to get the best out of him and that is awesome.
TSN continued to report throughout the day that with those moves, the Flames had put themselves over the cap and would have to make another move to get them under. So for the next couple of hours until Sutter had his press conference it seemed like there was going to be 1 more roster move. Ends up the Flames were still under the cap(more on that in a sec) and finished off the day by in my mind stealing a 4th round pick from Columbus for prospect goalie Kevin Lalande who has played in the ECHL all season. Thumbs up to that.
So it was a good day, other than hearing Big Bert is out at least a month after have arthroscopic knee surgery. Sounds like he will be back for the playoffs which is good so players like Moss, Boyd and Glencross will have to continue to pick up the slack. With Bert going down, though Im not 100% sure on this, is what helped the Flames stay under the cap. Not sure like I said but that's the only way this all makes sense to me. I haven't heard officially if Jokinen and Leopold will be in the Flames line-up tomorrow night against Philly, but I dont see why they wouldnt be.
Potential Lines:
1- CAMMALLERI-CONROY-IGGY
2- LUNDMARK-JOKINEN-MOSS
3- GLENCROSS-BOYD-NYSTROM
4- VAN DER GULIK-PETERS-ROY
INJ- LANGKOW, BERT, BOURQUE, PRIMEAU
1- PHANEUF-VANDERMEER
2- REG-AUCOIN
3- SARICH-LEOPOLD
E- PARDY
1- KIPPER
Anyways that is the Flames trade deadline wrap up, my buddy Jamie will have his opinion on the Flames moves as well in his post. Let's hope for a long playoff run, GO FLAMES GO!!
No comments:
Post a Comment