The Most Stressful Day of the year
On Wednesday I woke up at 7:45am and was surprisingly alert, which is very out of character for me… I'm more of a noon riser most days. But for hockey fans this day is a mix of Christmas morning and a day-long endurance test. I'm referring to Trade Deadline Day! By 8:00am my room looked like my own personal "war room"… the coffee's brewing, the TV gets turned to the NHL Network (feeding TSN's TradeCentre), and the computer is logged into the live coverage on CBCsports.ca along with a few other sites. My main focus was obviously tracking the moves Peter Chiarelli and the Bruins were going to be making through out the day. Needless to say the day ended up being quieter then I had hoped for.
The first trade of the day was Derek Morris being sent back to the Phoenix Coyotes for a conditional 4th Round Draft Pick (it will become a 3rd Round if Phoenix resigns Derek at the end of the season). This was clearly a move to free up some cap space. I was hopeful this would lead to a bigger trade later on in the day.
The next move the Bruins made was sending Craig Weller, Byron Bitz and a 2nd Round Pick to the Florida Panthers for defensemen Dennis Seidenberg and Matthew Bartkowski. Not exactly what I had hoped for, but Siedenberg's a decent D-man and it was still early enough in the day that anything could happen.
But nothing did…
To say I'm disappointed would be an understatement. I think everyone was expecting, or at least hoping for, a top 6 winger. But the Bruins didn't make another deal for the rest of the day.
I know it would be very easy to point the finger and say Chiarelli didn't do his job. But I just can't do that. At the end of the day there wasn't a lot that could really be done. One single player (especially the ones available) isn't going to turn this team into Cup contenders this year. All the "big names" would've been nothing more then rentals... and all the teams with those players were eyeballing the Bruins 1st Round picks, which would definitely not be worth giving up. I'm obviously not happy with what the day brought the Bruins, but I'm not going to pretend that there was a player that was in Chiarelli's reach that would bring us a Cup this spring. So now it's up to the players we have to step their game WAY UP to get the B's into the Playoffs, which I still believe is completely in their reach.
This is the Bruins team we are going to have for the remainder of the season… So it's time we stop all the complaining, get behind them, and show them that we all support the guys we have.
