The 5-Hole – Blue Jackets News and Notes: 3/3/09 – NHL Trade Rumors Edition

Every Tuesday, WFNY’s The 5-Hole brings you up to date with the goings-on of the CBJ…

The Week That Was

Week: 1-2-0, 2 points
Overall: 31-26-6, 68 points (3rd division; 6th conference)

The Jackets are at a crossroads: they are still in the playoff hunt, but they are struggling to find their game right now. A three game road trip ending 1-2-0, with only three goals scored on offense. Were it not for Steve Mason’s shut-out on Thursday night in Edmonton, they would be on a four game losing skid. The crossroads also has a fork labeled “Trading Deadline” as the NHL Trading Deadline is Wednesday at 3 PM. There are many possibilities for the Jackets to go out and get a player, but the question will be: is it worth it to part with a #1 pick to try to make the playoffs this year, when the future is arguably as bright as it’s ever been?

Tuesday, 2/24 in Calgary – Flames 4, Blue Jackets 1 (Box Score) – Highlights
Thursday, 2/26 in Edmonton – Blue Jackets 1, Oilers 0 (Recap)
Sunday, 3/1 in Vancouver – Canucks 3, Blue Jackets 1 (Box Score) – Highlights

The Jackets need points, and to get those points, they need offense. They’ve scored 5 goals in their last four games, going 1-3-0 in that span. Only a solid defensive effort against Edmonton kept them off the schneide. The Jackets are still hanging on to the sixth place, and have a fairly tough schedule coming up these next two weeks, playing Detroit twice, as well as Eastern Conference playoff teams Boston and Pittsburgh, in addition to Western Conference stalwart Chicago. This is make-or-break time.

So, rather than dwell on the short-comings of the Jackets over the last four games, let’s look ahead to the crucial NHL Trading Deadline, which comes and goes tomorrow afternoon at 3:00. Get comfy, and watch out RockKing… this one might challenge some of your better posts for length!

The easiest way to really break this down is to throw the rumors that the beat writers are hearing out onto the table and then talk about them afterward. So, let’s get on with it! The Dispatch’s Aaron Portzline has been all over the various rumors of players after whom the Jackets might be going. Some of his notes/musings include:

[T]he Blue Jackets’ priority remains adding a center.

Buffalo’s Tim Connolly — highly skilled but highly prone to injury — keeps popping up in the NHL rumor mill. The Sabres are in the playoff picture, but word is the club would rather get something in return for Connolly than let him leave as an unrestricted free agent this summer.

Other names linked to the Blue Jackets by various NHL sources include Jordan Staal of Pittsburgh, Nik Antropov and Dominic Moore of Toronto, Matthew Lombardi of Calgary, Antoine Vermette of Ottawa and Brendan Morrison of Anaheim.

[GM Scott Howson] doesn’t want to break up what looks like a bright future for the Blue Jackets by trading top prospects Jake Voracek, Derick Brassard or Nikita Filatov.

A few clubs have inquired about defenseman Rostislav Klesla, but he won’t play until after the trade deadline because of a shoulder injury, so that could be a sticking point.

There is thought to be some interest in goaltender Pascal Leclaire, who had ankle surgery five weeks ago and is still a month away from returning. Teams that might be interested include Ottawa, Colorado, St. Louis and Atlanta.

More about LeClaire possibly being on the move:

As Wednesday’s NHL trade deadline nears, sources have told The Dispatch that the Blue Jackets have had trade talks with a handful of clubs regarding Leclaire.

The most interested team appears to be Ottawa, which desperately needs a goaltender.

Blue Jackets general manager Scott Howson scouted the Senators on Saturday night when they played Toronto, reportedly to watch winger Antoine Vermette.

Howson would not discuss any potential trade publicly. Toronto, Atlanta and Colorado are said to be looking for a goaltender, too.

Leclaire, who was second in the NHL with nine shutouts last season, is still viewed by many as a franchise-caliber goaltender. But the Blue Jackets see rookie Steve Mason as their goaltender of the future.

As Scott mentioned in today’s WWW, Tom Reed has also weighed in on potential moves for offensive help, as well. I won’t retype the pertinent quotes. Porty also updated his “Puck Rakers” blog very early Tuesday morning with some updates:

I’m told the Blue Jackets have made two official trade offers involving draft picks and “non-NHL-roster” players, that they expect to hear back by Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. If I had specifics, I’d gladly type them here. It’s not for a lack of dialing, I’ll assure you.

Just what the phrase “non-NHL-roster” player means is up for debate, too. I take to mean “a player not currently in the dressing room.”

There are conflicting reports out of Canada regarding Blue Jackets goaltender Pascal Leclaire. Ottawa GM Bryan Murray told the media in Ottawa that he won’t be able to fix the Senators goaltending with a trade at the deadline.

However, I’m told that the Sens are still pondering a trade that would send winger Antoine Vermette to Columbus as part of a deal for Leclaire. And perhaps Murray is measuring his words. Leclaire is currently on IR, so he would not be “fixing” the goaltending situation, not right away anyway.

The Senators might also be looking to trade defenseman Filip Kuba, so maybe this is a deal with the possibility to get bigger.

It appears that Maple Leafs GM Brian Burke has not lowered his demands for winger Nik Antropov. He wants a first-round draft pick. No way GM Scott Howson will give up a first-round pick for a player who might only be here six weeks. Antropov is an unrestricted free agent this summer.

Center Dominic Moore is having a career year with the Leafs. As long as he continues to demand “top six” money he can look forward to filling out a “change of address” form in the near future. The Blue Jackets would be interested in him, I’m told, but only if the aforementioned offers fall through.

It doesn’t appear the Avs are a fit for the Blue Jackets. They need a goaltender in the worst way. (Ever see Peter Budaj in action?) But the only skilled forward they’d be willing to trade is winger Marek Svatos, a former 30-goal scorer who has pretty good touch around the net. He’s not a Hitchcock player, though, not by a long stretch.

I don’t believe the Avs would part with center/winger Wojtek Wolski. They see him as part of their rebuilding effort. Ian Laperrier would be a fine addition to any playoff club, but the Blue Jackets would need only give up a mid-level draft pick or a middle of the road prospect to land Laperriere.

The Blue Jackets did not have a scout listed in attendance at the New York Islanders — Avalanche game on Monday.

First, some housekeeping. I don’t know how I’d feel about moving Rostislav Klesla, as he’s a solid player… when he plays. This year has been a lost season for him, as he’s battled a string of unrelated injuries all year. Whether that’s indicative of a larger problem, I can’t say. I could see why it might make sense to part with him, but in his current injured condition he’s not worth as much in a trade. Also, I can’t see Calgary and Anaheim parting with Lombardi (9G/20A/29PTS) and Morrison (10G/12A/22PTS, whom the Jackets went after in FA last summer as well) respectively. The Flames are in the thick of the top of the Western Conference, and the Ducks are still in the chase as well. I would also be surprised to see Jordan Staal (17G/18A/35PTS at AGE 20) on the move, but then again Pittsburgh has always been pretty cost-conscious, and with the money they will end up paying Crosby and Malkin… who knows? The rub in the NHL is that teams in the playoffs still tend to trade players away at the ends of their contracts. Because of the positional redundancy (i.e., you have 12 guys playing the three rotating forward spots on a given night and six guys each playing defense, etc.) and depth of many strong NHL rosters, it can make more sense for a playoff team to give up a solid player nearing the end of his contract if they think they won’t get anything for him after the season, playoff run or no playoff run.

Let’s start the breakdowns with the notion of trading Pascal LeClaire. Pascal isn’t helping the Jackets this season (he won’t be back until mid-April, by which time the regular season will be over, and if the Jackets make the playoffs Steve Mason will be starting every game regardless). Mason has showed himself to be worthy of the role of “franchise goalie” for the Jackets going forward since (at age 20 while coming back from major knee surgery in the off-season as well as battling mononucleosis) he leads the league in shut-outs, goals-against average, and is near the top in save percentage. LeClaire is a decent player, but has had injury issues almost every year and can’t be counted on to play a whole season without getting hurt. Plus, he costs more than Mason does at present, and he gets paid an awful lot to be a backup goalie right now.

So, if they could get Antoine Vermette from Ottawa for LeClaire without using a draft pick, that would be a decent move. Vermette is not a scoring machine by any stretch (9G/19A/28PTS), but he’s also languishing on a team with no offense to speak of other than the line of Dany Heatley, Daniel Alfredsson, and Jason Spezza. However, this season is a bit of an aberration. In the three full seasons after the lockout of ‘04-‘05 and prior to this year, he averaged over 21 goals and 20 assists per season. Vermette resigned with Ottawa for two seasons and $2.52 million last summer, so the Jackets would have him for the rest of this season and all of next at a fairly cheap rate, should they make a move. If they can get some help from Vermette while only giving up a player who now is not in their long-term plans, that can only be seen as an improvement.

Nik Antropov is an intriguing name, though the cost to get him would be much higher. Antropov has had a stellar career in Toronto, and this year has 21G/25A/46PTS in 63 games for the struggling Leafs. He has 291 points (125G, 166A) in 509 career games, and he would immediately bring another bonafide scoring presence to the Jackets. However, it is widely believed that it will cost a team a first-round draft pick to get him, and the Jackets most likely are reluctant to part with theirs (as well they should be). It doesn’t make sense to mortgage the future for this one season, as there’s little chance of making a serious run at The Cup even if the Jackets do reach the playoffs (having to beat some combo of San Jose/Detroit/Calgary/Chicago in three successive rounds with no home-ice advantage). Antropov’s contract ends after the season, so he’d be little more than a rental, which doesn’t make much sense for Columbus.

ESPN is reporting that it’s no longer likely that the Avalanche will move Ian Laperriere, so I’ll leave him out of the current discussion. He, too, would be a rental player, as his contract ends after the season, and his 7G/10A/17PTS line for the season in which he turned 35 years old doesn’t inspire that much hope that he would be a difference-maker at this point for Columbus. In fact, I am hopeful the Jackets stay away from the rental players this year, as they’re clearly on a solid track for the next few years with their young talent, and putting the brakes on that longer-term plan seems short-sighted to me. That said, I definitely want to see some playoff hockey in Columbus this year.

It’s going to be an interesting 24 hours, and I will do my best to keep those of you who have managed to read down this far updated!

Playoff Update

We’ve begun running this section, thanks to the data provided at the wonderful Sports Club Stats website that runs daily simulations and predicts probability of playoff finishes by conference. This site is updated daily, and also weights each game to show how every outcome affects each team in the race.

We dropped a few teams off as, the Kings sit in 13th in this simulation under 5%, and the two teams below them all qualified under 1% of the time in the simulations. The Jackets are sitting on the precipace right now, as despite having the sixth seed in points they are behind many teams in terms of games-in-hand. The gap between the sixth seed and the ninth and tenth seeds that was there maybe six or seven days ago is now gone. This week’s Western Conference playoff probabilities standings, thanks to Sports Club Stats:

(key: points – derived from record, 2 pts for a win, 0 for a loss, 1 for an overtime loss; G-I-H – games in hand; this number is the amount of games the team has left subtracted from the number of games played by the team who has played the most in the conference; Record – the team’s record, with wins, losses, and overtime losses [shoot-out losses count as overtime losses]; Playoff% is the probability in percent of the team making the playoffs based on their simulations)

Up Next

The Jackets have an important three games this week. The first two games have direct playoff implications for Columbus, and of course they always seem to play Detroit in the times that are most dire. To top it off the, last two games are on the road. Nothing like five road games in two weeks.

The Jackets host the Los Angeles Kings (61pts, 13th) on Tuesday night. They then head to Nashville to face the surging Predators (66pts, 9th) on Thursday night (a BIG one in the standings), and then finish the week on Saturday in Detroit (90pts, 2nd).  The Jackets need points in a big way. Winning those first two games would be huge.

Full Schedule

Who’s Hot, Who’s Not

Hot: No one. No one is scoring. They got circles skated around them in Vancouver. They’re 1-3-0 in the most important stretch of the season. Time to step up, boys.

Not: Umm, everyone. No one is scoring. They got circles skated around them in Vancouver. They’re 1-3-0 in the most important stretch of the season. Time to step up, boys. Oh, wait, that sounds familiar.

Injury Update

The Jackets have still been without Fredrik Modin, though he might play tonight against LA. This week they put Jason Chimera on the IR list.  The Jackets are struggling on offense, and with two key components on the shelf they are in dire need of finding help wherever they can (*cough* trading deadline *cough*).

To make matters worse, Michael Peca will miss tonight’s game against Los Angeles after taking a puck to the jaw against Vancouver. He suffered a huge gash on his jaw, and complained of a headache. So, if you’re scoring at home, if Modin doesn’t go tonight, the Jackets will be missing three of their top nine forwards against the Kings. Good times.

Quotes of the Week

We have to bury our chances. And we have to be more dangerous on the power play. We had chances.
–Captain Rick Nash, after the 4-1 loss in Calgary. The Jackets scored only three goals in three games on the road trip last week.

It’s been our story all year. The power play doesn’t get us any goals, and we have a hard time creating enough offense. It puts a lot pressure on the rest of our game. … We’re getting lucky right now. I mean, we’re in a great spot. We’ve never been in this spot before. Usually we’re out of it by now. But we’ve got to start playing better if we want to stay in this thing. And we know that.
–Nash, after the 3-1 loss in Vancouver on Sunday.

We’re not getting enough from our forwards. That was a theme on this trip. Our goaltending and our defense have been really good, but we’re not getting enough from our group up front. It’s something we’ll have to address.
–Coach Ken Hitchcock, also after Sunday’s loss.

I hate to channel any Keenan Thompson SNL characters, because I generally find him unfunny, but FIX IT!  I don’t care what you have to do. FIX IT! FIGURE OUT WHAT IS WRONG, AND FIX! IT! Perhaps GM Scott Howson can instead channel my man Homer Jay Simpson: “Don’t worry honey, daddy will fix that broken animal.” To that end…

Bonus Trading Deadline Quotes of the Week

I believe we have a good chance to get in (the Stanley Cup playoffs) this season. We’re not subtracting from our roster, I can tell you that.
–GM Scott Howson.

I’ll be very surprised if I move a first-round pick. It would have to be a significant player, not just a rental.
–Howson.

Stay tuned, folks! There always seems to be a big flurry of moves at the NHL trading deadline.