The view from the Woods

A slow press night at the Journal means I finally get to weigh in on the trade that brought proven goal-scorer Cory Stillman and dependable defenceman Mike Commodore to Ottawa. By this season’s NHL standards, it ranks as a blockbuster.

First of all, those that are convinced this was a bad trade due to Ottawa’s 0-2 record with the two new players in the lineup should hold their horses. The true judgment time for this deal will be the playoffs, where Stillman has proven he thrives.

Let’s look at the incoming goods. Stillman has won two of the last three Stanley Cups. He’s a dependable 20-to-30 goal scorer that provides the secondary scoring the Senators desperately need. Just check the Senators’ record when any of the big three of Heatley, Spezza and Alfredsson are out - their goal scoring and win count both drop dramatically. Stillman can team up with Mike Fisher and whoever is playing better between chris Neil, Randy Robitaille or Dean McAmmond to provide some timely secondary scoring and take a tiny bit of heat off the big line.
As for Mike Commodore, I wasn’t impressed with him as a seventh defenceman in Calgary’s 2004 run to the Cup Final. But since then, he has grown as a player, developing defensive awareness and a physical presence that earned him a permanent spot in Carolina, a Cup in 2006 and a spot on Canada’s World Championship team last year. He led Carolina’s defencemen in ice time this season and will be a solid addition on the back end. He is certainly a welcome, reliable presence compared to Joe Corvo’s fire-in-the-kitchen style of play.

Now, the players going the other way. Patrick Eaves was highly touted coming into Ottawa, but has never fulfilled his potential due to untimely injuries and a deep forward corps. On a team like Carolina, once he gets healthy, he could be a force. However, he could also continue to be the disappointment he was in Ottawa. His lack of skating speed has always been a factor, and perhaps the new NHL wasn’t the best change for him. Either way, Eaves’s performance in Carolina will dictate who wins this trade - if the Senators traded away a great scoring forward for a couple of rentals the Hurricanes have it in the bag. But if Eaves tanks, it’s no big loss for Ottawa.

As for Joe Corvo, I was hoping the Senators would trade him for a bag of pucks or something, or even pay someone to take him and his grossly inflated $2.75 million/year contract at the end of the season. The fact that Ottawa received some sort of value for him is a coup in my opinion. Corvo was a minus-9 in January on the top team in the East, and was a minus for most of last season. At one point, Corvo was a minus-7 while defence partner Tom Preissing was a plus-23…mind-blowing stuff. Corvo’s lack of defensive responsibility constantly landed the Senators in a jam, and inhibited whoever was forced to play with him, be it Wade Redden, Andrej Meszaros or Luke Richardson (the Corvo-Richardson duo, a match best made for the ECHL, still gives me nightmares…it’s nice I can finally start to move on). Corvo gives the Hurricanes what they need, a power play quarterback. Daniel Alfredsson can effectively fill that role for Ottawa, and Meszaros should get more power play time as well.

The early result of this trade is that both teams get what they need, which is what the ideal trade is supposed to accomplish. By the end of this year’s playoffs, it will be a whole lot clearer who got the better of the deal. It all hinges on how far Stillman and Commodore can help the Senators go.

Some random thoughts from the world of sports.

1. Don’t look now, but the Leafs beat three of the NHL’s top five teams this past week (Ottawa, Montreal and Detroit) and are six points out of the last playoff spot. Does this mean Uncle Cliffy will turn out to be a buyer at the trade deadline? Are the Buds destined for another ninth-place finish? At the very least, the Steven Stamkos watch may not include Toronto after all. Smart Leaf fans are cringing though…they’ve seen enough almost-playoff berths for now, and could do with a couple of solid losing years in order to build a Cup-contending team.

2. File this one under the “it’s a wonder this doesn’t happen more often” pile. As I write this, Florida Panthers forward Richard Zednik is being transported to hospital in Buffalo in stable condition after being cut in the neck when teammate Olli Jokinen accidentally hit him with his skate after being hit. A couple of times each year, an NHL player will suffer some sort of laceration from a skate blade, but with sixteen pairs of these on the ice at any given time (including officials), sometimes uncontrollably, it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often. This weekend, it’s happened twice in two days. Linesman Pat Dapuzzo was cut for 20 stitches and a broken nose by Steve Downie’s skate in yesterday’s Rangers-Flyers game. Downie proceeded to beat up Fedor Tyutin, a non-fighter, but that’s a story for another day. Hopefully face shields and neck guards will become more of a discussion after these incidents.

3. The Phoenix Suns showed their first sign of vulnerability…a shotgun, reactionary trade. Their acquisition of Shaquille O’Neal was met with the predictable hoopla, but is a telltale sign that the team is already a little bit nervous about that nagging playoff record of theirs. Shaq’s style doesn’t fit in with that of the Suns - at his fastest speed, he can make it to the other end of the floor by the time the Suns have already scored and are heading back on defence. He’s also injury-prone and not nearly as good of a leader as Shawn Marion, who although he wanted out of Phoenix, can do it all. The Suns remind me of the Ottawa Senators earlier this decade - great regular seasons, but zero playoff success, which used to compel them to make trades for good players, but ones that didn’t fit in with their team (Tom Barrasso, Peter Bondra, Tyler Arnason, etc.). Hopefully the Suns don’t suffer the same fate as the Sens did after those types of deals.

4. The University of Toronto Varsity Blues men’s hockey team choked worse than George W. Bush at pretzel time this past weekend, and lost out on the division to the Queen’s Golden Gaels. More on this in the Journal, but a division win is huge for Queen’s - a first-round bye and home-ice advantage (although who knows where they’ll be playing) in the next. Is this the start of something big for Ovens, Olsen and Co.? Here’s hoping so.