Friday
04Sep2009
Entries in Anatomy of a Trade (3)
Thursday
27Aug2009
A Career of Trades: Mike Sillinger
Thursday, August 27, 2009 at 2:13AM 
Mike Sillinger defines journeyman. After a 17-year career playing for an NHL record 12 different teams, Sillinger retired yesterday. He was traded an unprecedented ten times, five of which were within a week of the trade deadline. He played in nine different playoff seasons with eight different teams, only seeing the second round once - in 1991-92 with the Detroit Red Wings after spending the entire regular season in the AHL. Of the 12 teams he played for, only the Red Wings (who drafted him) were an original six franchise, and only played a full season with four: Detroit, Vancouver, Columbus, and the New York Islanders. His shortest tenure was with Ottawa, 17 games in the spring of 2001, and the longest he ever played in one city was 146 games with the Islanders.
But truthfully, Mike Sillinger was all about the trades.
Wednesday
19Aug2009
Anatomy of a Trade: Nikolai Zherdev
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 4:48PM 
By now you probably know about Nikolai Zherdev, the now former New York Rangers forward. Zherdev was seeking a $4.5M per year contract from the Rangers, and after failed negotiations was awarded $3.9M for one year by an arbitrator. Rangers GM Glen Sather chose to not accept the contract and walked away, leaving Zherdev a UFA. Many in the media applauded Sather as Zherdev had been considered lazy, inconsistent, immature, and even a poor teammate.
He also apparently got Doug MacLean fired.
New York acquired Zherdev last summer in a trade with Columbus. The Rangers sent defencemen Fedor Tyutin and Christian Backman to the Blue Jackets in exchange for Zherdev and centre Dan Fritsche. Zherdev and Fritsche were Columbus' first two draft picks in 2003 (4th and 46th, respectively) and were brought in to help New York's anemic offence. Columbus got a solid defenceman in Tyutin and the most consistent player in the NHL in Backman, who had just completed his fourth consecutive 18-point season (and a 19-point campaign with Frolunda during the lockout). It was a good trade for both sides at the time, but a year later Columbus clearly comes out on top. For New York this trade was a failure. Dig into the details, however, and the trade looks far, far worse.