With the 2010 Winter Olympics firmly in the history books – a little depressing, but it was a fun two weeks for hockey fans across North America – the business of the NHL resumes in earnest today. The trade deadline is fast approaching at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Any Stanley Cup playoff upgrades will come in the next 53 hours or through a team’s own internal options. So what will the Caps do, if anything? The deficiencies – such as they are for a team with the best record in the entire league at 41-13-8, 90 points – are obvious. The team could use another top-four defenseman. The Tomas Fleischmann experiment at center has worked to a degree. But he’s also winning just 45 percent of his faceoffs. Will that cut it heading into the postseason or does he need to shift back to wing? That’s fine if the Caps go that route. But in that case a forward must be traded or waived or there’d be some serious ice-time/chemistry issues. I just don’t see that happening for a modest improvement at center. As a thought experiment how about this comparison:
Center #1 » 11 goals; 23 assists; +19; 51.2% faceoffs
Center #2 » 16 goals; 23 assists; +16; 47.4% faceoffs.
That’s Caps center Brendan Morrison up top and Penguins center Jordan Staal below. Obviously Staal is the better player at this point of his career. He’s 6-foot-4 and 220 pounds and – more importantly – just 21. But the Caps would only upgrade from Morrison to match the Penguins – no one else Washington could face in the playoffs has that much depth at center. Is the gap between Staal and Morrison so great that it’s worth giving up assets that could be used elsewhere – either at this deadline or over the summer? That’s up to George McPhee. But Morrison is better in the faceoff circle with about the same number of chances (808) as Staal (982). He does have five fewer goals despite 32 minutes more on the power play. And obviously Staal is an elite two-way player and his team’s best penalty killer. Again, the point isn’t that Morrison – at 34 – is as good. The question has to be whether the gap is so wide the Caps need an upgrade? That’s the thought process every NHL general manger will employ this week. I’d leave this group of forwards – with a chance to be the top NHL offense since the lockout – alone.
Still, there are all kinds of trade rumors floating around involving the Caps. Would they flip Jose Theodore’s expiring contract and draft picks/prospects for Florida’s Tomas Vokoun? That’s a big upgrade at this point in the season. But Vokoun has an extra year on his contract at a hefty $6.3 million. Same goes for Boston’s Tim Thomas. The Caps could just ride into the summer, let Theodore go and use the savings at goalie to dole out raises to Tomas Fleischmann, Eric Fehr, Boyd Gordon, Jeff Schultz and – most important – Nicklas Backstrom. Do they really want to lose that flexibility to keep the rest of the roster intact?
Over the next 48 hours you’ll see plenty of names churning in the rumor mill. Defenseman Brian Pothier is the latest. And while I don’t discount that at all it really is the tip of the iceberg. You give NHL general managers two weeks without games to think about how to improve their teams and – trust me – they’ve thought about moving a dozen players off their roster. We’ll only hear a small portion of that chatter. Andy Sutton’s name has been bandied about. The Islanders defenseman would satisfy a vocal portion of the Caps fan base – a big man who can clear the heck out of the crease, doesn’t have a crushing salary-cap number ($2.938 million) and plays the third-most minutes on his team. In that case, Tyler Sloan becomes a depth defenseman at Hershey. Karl Alzner and John Carlson continue their development with the Bears, but are available for a playoff recall in case of injury. And Pothier or John Erskine slides into the No. 7 spot. Sutton’s just one of a dozen options George McPhee can explore. It’s going to be a busy two days.
