I Used to Play Bass for Sly

Heard any good trade rumours lately? Any of those rumoured deals actually happen?

Perhaps it's best to ignore all those alledged hot deals out there unless you're looking to drive traffic to certain web sites, you're a fan of Bruce Garrioch or one of the the trade deadline or the NHL draft is right around the corner, but I'm getting ahead of myself....

Trade Patterns

I presumed that these rumoured deals (well, at least the reasonable ones) were safe to ignore because post-lockout, trades in general weren't happening. Then I crunched the numbers (ok, I counted lists) and I was rather surprised to find that, on average, between October and February five trades happen each and every month in the NHL.

That might seem like a lot of trades (and it's way more than I expected to find) but then I took a closer look who is changing jerseys - it’s like I discovered a new game called "spot the AHLer."

This is a list of every player traded between the opening game of this season and today (February 11, 2009). How many of these players do you recognize? Is there a single super star among them? Belak doesn’t count.

Andrew Alberts
Wade Belak
Phillipe Boucher
Sheldon Brookbank
Matt Carle
Carlo Coliachovo
Steve Downie
Robbie Earle
Steve Eminger
Drew Fata
Jonathon Filewich
Dan Fritsche
Josh Gratton
Ryan Hamilton
Andrew Hutchison
Hugh Jessiman
Lukas Krajicek
Jason Labarbera
Junior Lessard
Joakim Lindstrom
Ned Lukacevic
Michael Lunden
Brad May
David McIntyre (traded twice)
Alexander Nikulin
Shane O’Brien
Michel Oullet
Adam Pineault
Eric Reitz
Tim Ramholt
Juraj Simek
Alex Steen
Lee Stempniak
Logan Stephenson
Brian Sutherby
Darryl Sydor
Nick Tarnasky (traded twice)
Lauri Tukonen
Jason Williams
Clay Wilson (traded twice)

I recognized just 17 of the 40 names on the list and I think of myself as a pretty tuned-in hockey fan.

Lee Stempniak, with 27 points (on pace for 40) is the player with the highest point totals and, I suppose, one of the most recognizable names.

Lee Stempniak. Seriously.

I’ll let the soak in for a minute.

Next time you read that Khababulin is headed to the Sens, Hossa is going to Montreal or Gomez is headed to the Canucks, remember that Alex Steen and Carlo Coliachovo for Lee Stempniak is the "blockbuster" deal of 2008.

Clearly, these are not the names that fuel hockey daydreams, click throughs, message board chatter and media columns.

Deadline Dealing

This is not to say that big deals don't happen, rather trades between October and February tend to be small beer. But things certainly heat up at the trade deadline.

In fact, that little window represents about 55% of regular season trade activities.

In 2005-06, there were 35 regular season trades and an additional 35 trade deadline deals.

In 2006-07, there were 30 regular season trades and an additional 46 deadline deals.

In 2007-08, there were just 21 regular season trades and an additional 26 deadline deals.

This year, there have been 28 trades to date. I suspect the trade deadline will come close to eclipsing that total (a chart for those of you with a blurry General Shwartzkopf fetish):

Save Your Rumours for the Off-Season

This is where the rumours should be circulating. Nothing like talking hockey in June, because on average, 22 trades are made each June - that's four times the in-season monthly average.

Last year, a stunning 45 deals went down around the NHL draft. You read that right, more trades happened in and around the third week of June 2008 than transpired between all of October and May of 2007-08 combined.

Here's what an active trading calendar looks like from October 2005 to February 2009:

Not hard to spot the trade deadline and NHL draft day.

Free Agency Season

And to get a bit more perspective on player transactions (or lack thereof) let's look at the number of players who change teams through free agency each off-season (excluding players who re-sign with their own teams).

The total is just slightly more than the number of players that are traded throughout the entire year: 139 in 2006-07; 112 in 2007-08; and 129 this past off-season.

What do these numbers tell us?

Burke has two upcoming windows to make a mark on this club: the trade deadline and draft day. More trades take place on draft day and trade deadline day than the rest of the year combined.

Teams are slightly more likely to acquire a player via free agency as they are through trade.

In the regular season, marginal players are far more likely to be traded than front-line talent.

Maple Leafs: Time to Face the Music

This morning at breakfast the iPod wasn't charged and I was too slow getting to the radio so I got stuck listening to some really bad music.

As Drive My Soul played in the background (gack!) it struck me that if the Toronto Maple Leafs really want to change their culture, if they really want a fresh start in 2008-'09, a public execution of the MLSE employee in charge of the in-game music programming at the ACC is as good a first step as any. (And how perfect would it be if it turned out Peddie or Tannenbaum was the one that picked Enter Sandman for the Leafs to skate out to?)

Is there anyone out there who thinks the Leafs need to play three Metallica songs each and every night? Does anyone at the game think Marilyn Manson, Bay City Rollers and Wolfmother=hockey? And does Zombie Nation's Kernkraft 400 really say "Toronto Maple Leafs score!" or does it just say: "I could be at any sporting event at any arena in North America."

As an aside, if Stephen Harper really wants a majority government I think the perfect way to harvest support in vote-rich Ontario is to formally ban The Final Countdown (with a full exemption for magicians) and then move on to Cotton Eyed Joe.

Maybe the Leafs need to take a page out of the Jays' playbook (as long as it's not the "missing the playoffs for 15 years" one) and have each Leaf pick their equivalent of the Jays at-bat music. When that Leaf scores, the ACC would play his tune.

The good: seeing the reaction to a Boyd Devereuax goal when one of the artists on his record label get some prime time play down at the ACC.

The bad: about six to eight times a year, we'd see Jason Blake first pump to something like Slowride by Foghat and odds are one of Poni, Grabovski or Antropov would pick Dragostea Din Tei (aka the Numa Numa dance) for their song...(You just know Stajan would pick some emo number and if Steen went with Abba, I'd trade him).

As someone who hasn't bought a new release since M. Ward's Post-War in 2006, I may not be ideally positioned to suggest an alternate play list for Maple Leaf games at the ACC, but anything (anything!) has to be better than the gratuitous use of Nickel Back, Def Leppard, and Linkin Park...

Team Softness = Injuries?

At the conclusion of last year's season, JFJ and MLSE threw around the meme that the Leafs "lost the most man games in the NHL due to injury" like JFJ threw around no-movement and no trade clauses.

At the time, I had a big problem with that that statement as:

1. I hate excuses (I think what-ifs and excuses were the cornerstones of the JFJ era)
2. If you look at the bulk of last year's injuries, they were to fringe players (Wozniewski was 17% of the total; 4th liners and Marlies were another 22%)
3. Good teams find ways to win, even when their big guys are hurting

What I didn't stop to consider was why the Leafs were so banged up.

After getting physically manhandled by Washington two nights in a row, the Leafs are once again threatening to run away with the injury title. It struck me that maybe the Leafs suffer so many injuries because they're a soft team.

Last year it was a sea of white shirts staring at their skate laces after Janssen laid out Kaberle.

The last two nights nobody laid a finger on Erskine and Eminger and the questionable hits (and one lovely end of game spear) kept on coming. Poni and Steen are both out as a result and White and Antropov were lucky to avoid the IR...

I'm far too lazy to crunch the numbers, but it would be interesting to see how many of the man games lost over the past 100+ games were the result of other teams playing big while the Leafs played small...

Shoot-out blues

...add another item to the list of bad stats that leaves me cold when I think of Raycroft holding the Leafs' single season win record: Raycroft's terrible record in the shoot-out. I'm not talking win/loss, I'm talking save percentage.

Raycroft has been beaten 13 times on 32 shots for a .594 sv%

That puts him 30th among goalies who've faced at least 10 shots and well below the league average of .678%

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Gotta wonder what Maurice is thinking when he picks his shooters.

Poni went 0 for 7 before Maurice looked elsewhere, Tucker was 1 for 5 before he was blanked against the Habs tonight (he's now a lumbering 1 for 6). Given how O'Neill and Steen buried the biscuit against NJ, you'd think Coach Maurice would go back to them...