bruins at the nhl trading deadline

If you somehow missed it, the NHL trading deadline was this afternoon. Perhaps you also slept through the 200000 hours of coverage over the last few days. I am sure you can get very detailed information about it somewhere.

The Bruins picks of Mark Recchi and Steve Montador bring experience - a euphemism for veteran, itself a euphemism for old - and skill to a team that is fairly new to the playoffs. In the case of Recchi, the Bruins have added the highest level of playoff success to the team.

I agree with the sentiment expressed by Tony Massarotti in the Boston Globe: this is not the year to throw away top flight players like Kessel, Krejci, Wheeler, et al., for a ton of rental players at the ends of their contracts. This is a Bruins club that has been pretty well crafted but is young and needs time to develop. In fact, I would say deserves the time to develop to its full potential. We beleaguered fans certainly deserve that.

Recchi won a cup in 91 and most recently in 2006 - he's a left-handed shot, which the Bruins lost with Sturm's injury, and he's obviously a passionate playoff performer. It's a good pick-up that could go either way, just as this team does.

Montador I know less about, though I remember him playing with Calgary when they had the scariest defense corps in the West (Leopold, Regehr, Montador, that curly haired weirdo that played for Carolina, Phaneuf and, I think, Daryll Strawberry). He's a hardnosed player, and my impression is that he can be prone to bad penalties, but he may be a bit of an insurance policy in the 'grit' department.

Going away from the Bruins are Nokelainen to the Ducks, Karsums, Lashoff to Tampa Bay. All three are good players, and could have excellent success with the new clubs. Long-time readers will know I am a fan of the rangy Nokelainen, but he's coming to the age where it will soon be clear if he's a diamond in the rough, or just the rough.

The Bruins also got a second-round draft pick with Recchi's deal. Krejci and Lucic were second-round picks, by way of example of the potential importance of this to the overall measurement of the deal.

Hopefully the team will start to gel again now that the deadline has passed, and those young minds can relax and play some solid hockey. They've been consistently inconsistent lately, dropping a lead and ultimately the win against Philly last night, blowing out the Ducks and Panthers a couple games earlier. Perhaps the addition of new firepower and tenacity will breathe some energy back into their game, and help re-form the hard-forecheck, all attack defense identity they've maintained for most of the season.

Or perhaps we'll be back here in a few weeks, asking why we didn't blow this team up, or at least trade for Strawberry.