In case you haven’t seen them, I have been covering the movement for the NHL trade deadline. While most sites will want to chip in their two cents on “winners” and “losers” in these trades, I am more concerned with the fantasy hockey impact. If you want to read up, here they are:
F Ryane Clowe (NYR) and D Marc-André Bergeron (CAR)
G Ben Bishop (TBL) and F Cory Conacher (OTT)
Those are the major deals that went down over the last couple of days. But that’s not to say those were the only deals of fantasy consequence. There are those that are in deeper leagues who might be looking for a guy on the waiver wire to help them out in these final dozen games of the season. Here are the smaller deals that went down.
TO Nashville: F Filip Forsberg
TO Washington: F Martin Erat, F Michael Latta
This trade is somewhat negligible in the sense that Erat’s value is somewhat limited. He should see an uptick in production, especially in goals, considering his 6.7% shooting is by far the worst of his career, having never shot under 10% in any season where he’s played at least 60 games. He’s not shooting very much, although he never really has, so maybe a few more shots will lead to some goals. It was surprising that Washington traded one of the highly touted prospects not in the NHL right now in Forsberg. Forsberg, not even 19 yet, was the #1 ranked European prospect for last year’s draft and was taken 11th overall. Washington is pushing all their chips to the middle. Let’s see if it pays off.
TO New Jersey: F Steve Sullivan
TO Phoenix: 7th round pick in 2014
In essentially a salary dump, Sullivan goes back to the team that drafted him back in 1994. This is absolutely nothing to get excited about unless you are in a crazy-deep league. He has just 82 points in his last 156 games in the NHL, meaning he’s barely a 40 point-type player in a full season. With Kovalchuk out, the Devils have lost four straight games and have scored just ten goals in those four games. The goal scoring might not seem too shabby, but considering three of those teams were Tampa Bay, Florida and the Islanders (three of the 10 worst teams in goals against), the Devils are in a world of hurt. Steve Sullivan is not the answer to their prayers.
TO Boston: D Wade Redden
TO St. Louis: Conditional 7th round pick in 2014
In a resurgent season (in that he’s actually back in the NHL), Redden found himself on the Blues. With a loaded blueline already, it was a wonder how much actual ice-time Redden would get. So far this year, Redden has averaged under 15 minutes of ice-time per game, is getting sparse power-play time and hasn’t scored a goal in 20 games (with just three assists in that stretch). There may be concern that he will cut into power-play time but I think it will be minimal. The interesting thing about Redden is that he’s been given lots of opportunity to succeed; his 56.2% offensive-zone start rate is second among St. Louis blueliners, just behind Kris Russell at 58.4%. In this sense, he’s been worse than we think. Redden was brought in to offset the loss of Adam McQuaid so unless you’re in a 16-team league with 30 players on a roster, Redden can stay in the waiver pool.
TO Pittsburgh: Jussi Jokinen
TO Carolina: Conditional 7th round pick in 2013
Jussi “The Joose” Jokinen is an interesting addition. Long-considered a shootout specialist (shooting 36% over the last 4+ years, anything over 33% is excellent), people forget he has posted 30+ assists in each of the last three seasons and has averaged 20 goals per season over that stretch. He was getting third line minutes so far this year at just 15:35 per game, his lowest since 2008-2009, so it’s no wonder he’s on pace for his worst offensive season since, you guessed it, 2008-2009. With Sidney Crosby out at least the rest of the regular season, a play-making centre is what Pittsburgh needed to get them to the end of the year. Jokinen is exactly the guy they were looking for. He could be a sneaky player in deeper formats as well as in daily fantasy leagues (as long as he gets that second role).
There other trades that happened before the deadline are not of any real fantasy significance. After a slow start to deadline day, things sure picked up quickly at the end of it. Good luck down the stretch of your fantasy hockey seasons.
