Meszaros traded from Ottawa for 1/3 of Tampa Defense
Okay, that's not a real headline but its accurate. As a hockey fan who takes in an occasional Bolt's game, I'm shaking my head in disbelief.Breaking Down the Deal
1. Filip Kuba to Ottawa - He's never going to be compared to Nicklas Lidstrom or even Nicklas Wallin, but last year he amounted to 1/2 of the shutdown pairing placed on the ice against AO and other strong offensive lines. Granted, this was out of necessity and not the natural order of defensemen, but he was deemed the best option by a pretty decent coach. Look at this link for the last Caps v. Bolts match-up you'll see that Kuba was on the ice for 10.4 of AO's 23.31. Second only to...
2. Alexandre Picard to Ottawa - I'm not sure where to begin here. I remember during this game thinking that the kid could hit, dig in his own corners retrieving the puck and making a decent first pass. Torts was obviously in a "nothing to lose", "lets play the kids" mentality but Picard had 24:19 of ice time, second only to Dan Boyle's 26 minutes. Plus, he played 11.2 minutes against AO -- tops on the team. Smaby, Lundin, Janik, and Karlsson together totalled 9.1 minutes against Ovechkin in that game.
3. Andrej Meszaros to Tampa - Watching him play as a rookie when he was putting up those ludicrous +/- numbers, I was impressed by his ability to find the open seams in the ice, and take a shot. I didn't notice his defensive skills but I didn't care because I was kicking myself over not grabbing him in my Fantasy league off the waiver wire. Apparently Len & Oren have a similar mentality. "Oh man, we could get him for nothing" must have been the sentiment around Hockey ThinkTank that masquerades itself as the Bolt's front-office nowadays. The difference, however, was that he wasn't a free waiver wire pick and in fact cost quite a bit.
In 2006-2007, Team Melvis drafted him as a second defenseman, and he was expected to deliver the goods. Puzzlingly, after a miserable start to the season statistically I decided to watch a couple of games before deciding whether to toss the bum out on the street. What I saw was that he wasn't joining the rush, was stuck playing in no man's land between the bluelines, and showed little of the same confidence as he did playing as a rookie in 05-06. With the departure of Chara, he was getting tougher opponents and was asked to take a larger defensive role. In short, I tossed him. Team Melvis didn't pay much attention to him in 2007-2008, so he may have broken out of his funk. However, looking at the comments from the Sens staff over the last couple of weeks, probably not.
The Net:
Sens - They ship out a defensively "mercurial" player (one of my favorite euphemisms for inconsistent) that was going to cost them at least 4m in exchange for a solid 2nd pair of d-man and a first round pick. They should see this like a kid being told that for Christmas he can choose between new clothes or books. But then on Christmas morning he wakes to find the clothes, the books, plus a Playstation, and a supermodel girlfriend under the tree. So if you're the Sens, you're pretty happy with the deal (unless the supermodel girlfriend was not your girlfriend, you cannot remember what happened the night before, and the police are beating down your door).
Bolts - Olie is going to wish he retired after last year. His career GAA and SV% numbers are going to take a beating with this defense in front of him. This deal stinks for the short-term or long-term health of the Bolts. They lose two of their best defensemen (if not their two best outright performers), once of which being a potential stud on the backline, plus a 1st round pick from San Jose. At least they didn't give up their own first round pick because that one is going to be a good one... Are there two or three syllables in Tavares?
