Don’t be shocked if Lamoriello strikes at trade deadline
Once upon a time, there was a player with whom I’d been pretty close (translation: he was a reliable source of information), who previously had been in New Jersey. Then, without so much as a hint, he was traded back to the Devils. Only after the deal was announced did his number pop up on my caller ID. What?
“Sorry,” he said. “But Lou told me that if he read about this in the New York Post before it happened, the trade would be off.”
(Presumably, Lou Lamoriello had received permission from the other general manager to speak with this player, likely to gauge his interest in returning to New Jersey. Then again, well, the statute of limitations has surely expired.)
Which is to say that anyone claiming to know Lamoriello’s business is talking through his hat. But I can advise you the general manager of the NHL’s most pleasantly surprising team is not only extremely active leading into the trade deadline, but jumps the market once he has identified his target(s).
We’re not yet out of January. The Islanders — the first-place Islanders as of late Friday following the victory in Washington that neatly bookended a week that began with the rout of the Lightning last Sunday, if you please — still have much work to do to secure an unexpected playoff spot. Don’t cramp your brain trying to figure out how to design a parade route from Atlantic Avenue to Hempstead Turnpike. Not yet, at least.
But Lamoriello, as much as any other chief hockey executive since the concept of deadline rentals was created in the aftermath of the 1994-95 lockout, has a history of going for it when he believes his team is close. He does not hoard prospects and draft picks. Rather, he views them as fungible assets.
Lamoriello was among the first GMs to get in on the NHL’s lend-lease operation, sending young Cale Hulse and Tommy Albelin to Calgary in order to rent Phil Housley in 1996. Hulse played for nearly a decade in the NHL. Housley played 22 games for New Jersey.
see also
Lou Lamoriello has brought chills back to Islanders fan base
Lou Lamoriello was sitting in a small room that first…
Beyond that, though, Lamoriello tends to strike quickly. The Housley deal was completed on Feb. 26, three weeks ahead of the March 20 deadline. In 2000, the Devils pulled off a rental deal with Montreal for Vladimir Malakhov on March 1, just under two weeks before the deadline. In 2010, Lamoriello acquired Ilya Kovalchuk from Atlanta on Feb. 4, more than three weeks before the Feb. 28 deadline, while a half-dozen interested parties were still in fact-finding mode.
The Islanders have a pretty fair collection of young assets courtesy of the Garth Snow regime. Expect Lamoriello to dangle them — maybe to rent Matt Duchene as immediate support for Mat Barzal, maybe to rent dangerous sniper Mark Stone, maybe to rent depth on defense by acquiring either Jake Muzzin or Alec Martinez. Maybe even both defensemen — or have you forgotten 2003, when the offense-needy Devils acquired defenseman Igor Tverdovsky and Richard Smehlik in advance of winning their third Cup?
I don’t know exactly whom Lamoriello will target, and, honestly, neither does anyone else who might tell about it and expect to live. But I know this. The Islanders will be aggressive on the market, and likely well ahead of the deadline.
Even if the Blue Jackets put pending free agent Sergei Bobrovsky on the market, trading for the goaltender represents a major gamble for a contender. This has nothing to do with either his underwhelming postseason record or his breach of etiquette after being pulled from a game a couple of weeks ago, when, we’re told, he had dressed in his street clothes and had boarded the team bus before the match had even been completed.
Rather, it is history that makes a deal so dicey. Trades of marquee goaltenders proximate to the deadline are extremely rare. Ryan Miller, who went from Buffalo to St. Louis in 2014, is only example this decade, and look how that turned out with the netminder crashing and burning in a six-game first-round defeat to Chicago in which he had a .897 save percentage.
The only goaltender traded as part of pre-deadline action who made an immediate playoff impact is Dwayne Roloson, who went to the Oilers from the Wild in 2006 and led eighth-seed Edmonton to the Stanley Cup final. Kelly Hrudey did make an immediate impact after going to the Wayne Gretzky Kings from the Islanders in 1989 — winning the first round over Edmonton after Los Angeles fell behind 3-1 in the series — but that was 30 years ago and Hrudey was no rental.
It is not the end of the world that Alex Ovechkin is skipping the All-Star Game in San Jose, Calif., next Saturday. The exhibition will go on, the folks attending the three-on-three game, Friday night’s skills competition and the attendant festivities will have a blast regardless.
Still, is it only me who hears the excuse — sorry, explanation — that the reigning Conn Smythe winner is cutting out of the game because he needs to rest for the second half and is a bit baffled, since the five-day, bye week was created in exchange for the players (via the PA) agreeing to the three-on-three format?
How’s this for an Islanders Revenge Tour into the Cup finals as a crossover wild card? First round, Tampa Bay (Rangers thus don’t get the Lightning’s first-rounder); second round, Toronto (Lamoriello); third round, Washington (Barry Trotz).
Finally, news that the World Cup will not be played in 2020 must have hit hard for guys like Jack Hughes, Brock Boeser and Brady Tkachuk.
Imagine, the lifelong dream of wearing that Team North America jersey gone forever.