Friday is the National Hockey League’s trade deadline. To be even more specific, 3 p.m.
I don’t know about you, but when I hear things like this, all I can think of is standing in line in Hialeah hoping to get that last bet down before getting shut out.
All professional sports teams, today, give their franchises one last in-season opportunity to obtain players that might help them reach the postseason. Either that, or they rush to sell stars they see as no longer worth their salaries under the franchise’s current conditions.
The Bruins’ Brad Marchand springs to mind. Wasn’t it wonderful last spring watching “Marchy” skate around with the Stanley Cup after the Florida Panthers won it?
These deadline situations, of course, leave everyone wondering, three months in advance, “Will the Bruins be buyers or sellers?” It gets so ridiculous that the answer seems to change every time they lose a game (or win one).
It also depends on your organizational philosophy. How aggressively do you want to pursue a spot in the postseason for the sole sake of being able to say you made it? I would have an awfully tough time with that one. I’ve never been a fan of doing something simply for the sake of doing it. I’d save those deadline deals for seasons where my team had a genuine chance to contend, not just show up.
My mind goes back to the 1990 baseball season, when the Red Sox were eager to land one more relief pitcher for the stretch run. They dipped into their minor league system and sent a kid named Jeff Bagwell to the Houston Astros in exchange for Larry Andersen.
Andersen wasn’t a bust. He had a 1.23 ERA in his month-long career with the Sox. It’s just that Bagwell spent 15 seasons as one of the most feared right-handed hitters in baseball, and was elected to the Hall of Fame.
And while the Red Sox did win the AL East, they were on the wrong end of one of the most uncompetitive sweeps against the Oakland A’s. (That’s the series in which future Astro Roger Clemens took a nutty on the mound in Game 4 and got tossed.)
I know second-guessing is a national pastime in sports, but in this case, someone in the Red Sox organization wasn’t reading the tea leaves too clearly. Yes, you have to give up talent to get talent in return, but please, don’t peddle your future for someone who’s only going to stick around for a month.
The Red Sox, Bruins, and Celtics have all made these mistakes. The Patriots, not so much, mainly because NFL teams generally deal in draft picks.
The worst part of trade deadline deals is when players you’ve grown to like are given to other teams for very little. The only time I’ve ever seen it work out is when the Sox dealt Nomar Garciaparra off the team for a bunch of rent-a-players. They ended up winning the World Series that season (2004), which automatically made it a great deal. Of course, one of those seasonal rentals turned out to be Dave Roberts, a better thief than all six Brinks robbers, and much more beloved, too.
On the other hand, many civic icons have been sent packing in unsuccessful attempts to land players for the future. Danny Ainge went to Sacramento for Easy Ed Pinckney; Jon Lester got dealt to Oakland for Yoenis Céspedes and a bag of baseballs; and we’ve already discussed Marchand.
Once in a while, though, these things achieve the desired results. In 1974, the Bruins traded Freddie O’Donnell, a journeyman, for Bobby Schmautz, who had a shot like a cannon but couldn’t always control it. (I recall nicknaming him “Second Balcony Bob.”) He also had the rap of not being the most diligent defender.
In his five seasons with “da Broons,” he blossomed into a fierce forechecker and backchecker, as well as a dangerous scorer. It was one of those rare instances in which he got better thanks to the trade.
However, Schmautz and the Bruins could have opened up a vulcanized rubber distribution center with the pucks they shot at Philadelphia’s Bernie Parent in that season’s Cup finals, but Bernie and the Flyers ended up winning in six games.
