It’s done: Atlanta trades Kovalchuk to New Jersey

All the rumors and speculation can now come to an end. Ilya Kovalchuk has finally been traded. Atlanta sent the Russian sniper along with Anssi Salmela to New Jersey in exchange for a defenseman Johnny Oduya, rookie forward Niclas Bergfors, currently suspended prospect Patrice Cormier and a 2010 first-round pick after days of speculation that a deal would go down. The teams will also swap second-round selections in this June’s Entry Draft.

Kevin Allen of USA Today (who owned this story tonight) alerted the world earlier this evening that a deal would go down and that it would happen tonight.

As Wysh broke down the contenders this morning, he noted that New Jersey had quietly been in the mix for Kovalchuk and with Thrashers associate GM Rick Dudley in attendance at a Lowell Devils game in New Jersey last night, signs began pointing towards Devils GM Lou Lamoriello pulling the trigger on a deal. (Wysh has also deemed the Devils as “Stanley Cup champions in waiting”)

The final nail in the coffin was Waddell’s statement this afternoon announcing that contract talks had reached an “impasse” and Kovalchuk had rejected two offers, including a 12-year, $101 million deal. Waddell said that going any higher than $101 million would risk the future of the Atlanta roster:

“If we went beyond these offers, we would not be able to retain the young players on our roster when it came time to sign them or invest in other top-tier players needed to assemble a truly competitive team. Therefore, we are aggressively exploring all of our options as we move forward.”

What did Waddell have to say about the deal after it went through?

So the Thrashers get Oduya, a veteran defenseman who didn’t fit into what Jacques Lemaire was preaching behind the New Jersey bench. They also get a 22-year old Bergfors, currently in a major scoring slump in this his first full NHL season, but also who has shown plenty of promise at times. Cormier captained Team Canada at the recent World Junior Championships, but he also brought controversy upon himself with three separate elbows in the span of a month, one of which got him suspended for the rest of the season. Under Cormier’s suspension, he’s unable to play in any Hockey Canada affiliated league. Lamoriello had stated that the Devils would respect the QMHJL’s season-long suspension of Cormier and not have him play for Lowell of the American Hockey League. It’ll be interesting if Waddell does the same.

The big prize, of course, is Kovalchuk who brings a dimension to the Devils that they’ve never seen before. Since the lockout, only Alex Ovechkin has scored more goals in the NHL than Kovalchuk. With Martin Brodeur in goal, the NHL’s best defense and a 1-2 scoring punch of Zach Parise and now Kovalchuk, the New Jersey Devils are your new Stanley Cup favorites. The time frame for the Devils to win is now and this move signifies that Lamoriello is going all in to bring a fourth Stanley Cup to New Jersey.

Like with the Marian Hossa-to-Pittsburgh trade from 2008, the package Atlanta received for Kovalchuk isn’t one that will make Thrashers fans feel any better about trading away the face of their franchise. Once again, Atlanta sees a star player dealt away and are promised that the “assets” in return will help build for the future. As Zach Bogosian, Evander Kane and Ondrej Pavelec continue to develop, Thrashers fans are left wondering when their time will be “now” instead of helping other NHL teams reach that point

Blue Jackets fire Hitchcock thanks to season of horrors

The Columbus Blue Jackets fired Ken Hitchcock Wednesday — or, according to the spin-tastic headline on the front page of their Web site, “Noel named interim head coach” — and it’s fair to ask if it’s a case of “too much, too late.”

They’re 11 points out of a playoff spot in the Western Conference, thanks to a 2-9-5 stretch in December. On Jan. 4, we asked if the team was ready to make an enormous course correction to save its season:

If Ken Hitchcock were to be fired by the Columbus Blue Jackets, who are currently trapped in a 2-10-6 death spiral in an increasingly lost season, it would fit snugly in that last category. It would be an admission that the system he coaches, the style he preaches and the very identity of the franchise for the last few seasons has run its course.

One month later, they’ve made this franchise redefining decision, after a 7-7 January and with long odds on leapfrogging teams such as the Detroit Red Wings, Dallas Stars and Anaheim Ducks for a playoff seed.

From the Jackets and GM Scott Howson:

“This season has been very disappointing for the Blue Jackets organization and our fans and the responsibility for that rests with all of us from management to the coaches and players,” said Howson. “Hitch worked tirelessly to build an identity for this team that was missing before he arrived and deserves a great deal of credit for those efforts. He earned and received the opportunity to turn things around this season, but unfortunately that has not happened and it has become apparent that change is in the best interest of our organization. Claude Noel is a good hockey coach with a proven track record in the American Hockey League. He knows our team and is deserving of this opportunity.”

Noel is 54, and was head coach of the Milwaukee Admirals for four seasons.

Wow, what a collection of falls-from-grace the 2009-10 Blue Jackets have become. Calder Trophy winning goal Steve Mason has a higher goals against average (3.28) than all but two goalies in the NHL. A Hitchcock system that helped the Blue Jackets to ninth in team defense last season has broken down to fourth-to-last this season. A playoff team that showed such growth last season regressed into a conference also-ran.

No question, this move is a desperation attempt at trying to turn around the fortunes of the team on the ice, which in turn brings in the kinds of revenues the team saw during its playoff run last year.

But it also refocuses a ton of scrutiny on Howson, who had received praise for the patient construction of the roster and retaining the services of Rick Nash, but whose below-average, wafer thin blue line (check the depth chart) may be one of the primary reasons the team fell apart this season defensively. (Although let’s not downplay Mason’s role in that mess, either. He’s been terrible.)

Dark Blue Jacket’s take on Hitch:

This is not a happy moment.  A moment of relief, perhaps, and a chance for hope that things will get better for the CBJ – but by no means happy.  You never want to see a good man, one who puts everything he has into his work, lose his job when losing his job means that he failed.  And Hitch is a good man.

I only hope that Hitch finds his new place in the hockey world quickly, and that the Columbus Blue Jackets make the smart steps forward to secure their very bright future.  Anyone who followed the team closely this year could see that it just wasn’t meant to be.

This move feels less like a moment of rebirth than an acknowledgment of disaster. But hey, bright side: Nikita Filatov should be booking his flight back, right?

Jokinen Dissent: Yes, some actually don’t like trade for Rangers

Look, as underwhelming, overpaid and undesirable an acquisition as Olli Jokinen might seem to be, the notion that last night’s swap between the New York Rangers and the Calgary Flames could be detrimental to the Rangers is sort of baffling.

Alex Kotalik and Christopher Higgins were toxic spare parts, with Kotalik carrying around a problem contract. Suck or shine, Jokinen is a UFA after this season, so this is a rental at worst.

Hell, clearing Kotalik’s contract and Higgins’s hometown jitters might have been worth it for Brandon Prust alone, and all he does is fight. (Although, to be fair: There was a moment last night in which he was the leading trending topic on Twitter.)

This trade is like someone with a lactose intolerance swapping two spoiled milkshakes for a slice of day-old pizza; at least there’s still a chance you can hold your nose and enjoy the pepperoni.

Yet less than 24 hours after the trade (finally) became official, there are some interesting minority opinions on what the majority sees as a slam-dunk for Glen “Fire” Sather. Has Olli Jokinen’s game and reputation regressed to the point where even an apparent steal can turn sour? Are there reasons to worry about Olli, beyond the ready availability of a good razor in the Rangers locker room to take care of that follicle nightmare on his upper lip?

(UPDATE: An email from Mrs. Jokinen telling us we stink at the bottom of post.)

Mike Chen of From The Rink sees Jokinen’s downward trend continuing on Broadway:

Ah, work ethic — you know, the thing that John Tortorella $!*&ing loves more than anything else. Here’s the problem facing Jokinen: he’s trending downward, his passion and leadership have been questioned in his last three stops, and he’s not getting any younger. Based on that, I’m guessing Jokinen starts out well for New York before falling into Tortorella’s doghouse, where he plays out the rest of the season and heads into free agency for the highest bidder. Someone will overpay, and Jokinen will play well for 20 games before he falls into another rut, and the fans label the deal as one of the worst in the off-season.

The “highest bidder?” The question is where Jokinen’s stock is right now, and where it is if he finds a groove with the Rangers, as far as scoring something in the $5.5 million range next summer. Not sure if there will be a bidding war for him or not.

Steven Ovadia of Puck Update sees the trade as two teams pushing garbage around:

It’ll be interesting to see where the Rangers place Jokinen. My guess is he won’t play with Marian Gaborik most of the time, in an attempt to give the Rangers the illusion of depth and scoring.

So the Rangers dump some dead weight and get back a difficult personality they won’t have to deal with for long. The Flames dump that same personality and get back some players the seem to think they can get going. It’s a lot of bad pieces moving around, but at least the bad pieces are evenly spread.

Larry Brooks of the NY Post writes that “for better or for worse, Olli Jokinen is a Ranger” and ponders his chemistry issues:

Even if the Rangers don’t seem to be subtracting all that much of immediate value, one wonders what the dynamic will be like with Jokinen, who was unable to develop any sort of rapport with All-Star right winger Jarome Iginla after joining the Flames at last year’s trade deadline.

File Jonathan Willis of Hockey or Die under “cautiously optimistic” about Jokinen with the Rangers and beyond, thanks to an analysis of his stats:

We see a sharp decrease after Jokinen left the Southeast Division, but he’s still averaging in the neighborhood of three shots per game. The sharp decrease is his shooting percentage, which has dropped from better than 10.0% to less than 7.0%. To put that drop in perspective, if Jokinen were averaging the same shooting percentage that he had last season, he’d already have 20 goals.

Any number of factors could be impacting Jokinen’s shooting percentage, but it’s unlikely to be a permanent decline; many players see their shooting percentage dip or spike for unknown reasons, but in the vast majority of cases they return to their career levels. For that reason, I’d say that Jokinen is a very good bet to return to the 25-30 goal range wherever he plays next season.

The Prospect Park had an inventive dissention, claiming the trade was a troubling one because it’ll give Sather too much cap space to make another mistake next summer:

If Sather wanted to make a deal then he would have found a way to address the defensive corps that is a combined -23 and can not stop anyone. That is what a trade is supposed to do address a weak area on the team.

OK you want to say the Rangers needed to add scoring which might be right except if all of the scoring is put on one line then the move still makes no sense. All this trade is doing is potentially giving Sather a chance to find another bad player to sign next July 1.

That last critique may be the best one of the trade, because otherwise it’s chatter about perceived chemistry issues before they happen or the degradation of an offensive game that, even in this season-long slump, makes Jokinen the team’s second-highest scoring center (11-24-35) behind the Gaborik-inflated Vinny Prospal.

The Rangers drop two riddles and welcome The Joker for a few months. Why so serious?

• • •

UPDATE 3:20 p.m. EST: We dish it out, we can take it. So in the interest of fairness, we yield the floor to Katerina Jokinen (photo here), whose email address we’ve independently verified as being that of Mrs. Olli Jokinen. From the PD inbox, unedited:

I have a pretty thick skin when it comes to articles written about my husband and I’m not very easily disturbed or get upset so I don’t want you to think about what I’m about to say comes from a wrong place but PLEASE consider changing your proffession if writing crap like this is it.

I honestly cannot remember reading a worse article in my life! Really really really BAD writing.

Yikes!

If she only knew how much support she has among Puck Daddy readers for those comments …

Leafs shakeup brings Phaneuf, Giguere to Toronto

When the news broke yesterday that the Anaheim Ducks had signed Jonas Hiller to a four-year, $18 million extension, the rumors of Jean-Sebastien Giguere coming to Toronto to reunite with Brian Burke and former goalie coach Francois Allaire began rumbling. Things picked up a bit last night as soon as Daniel Sedin scored to complete the Vancouver Canucks comeback against Toronto after being down 3-0 in the first period. A CBC shot of Brian Burke at the end of the game last night showed that the Maple Leafs GM wasn’t happy and change was-a-comin’.

Change came this morning in a big way as the Maple Leafs announced two deals that greatly change the face of their current roster. Deal number one sent Matt Stajan, Ian White, Jamal Mayers and Niklas Hagman to Calgary for Dion Phaneuf, Fredrik Sjostrom and Keith Aulie.

Phaneuf’s name has been in trade rumors for most of this season and earlier this month Flames GM Darryl Sutter went out of his way to deny that the Calgary defenseman was on the trading block. Since Sutter denied the rumors, the Flames have gone 2-7-2 and slipped to the bottom of the top eight in the Western Conference standings. Calgary also has the chance to free up salary cap space over the summer, as Mayers and Stajan are unrestricted free agents, while White is restricted come July 1. Mirtle has a good breakdown of the cap ramifications over at the Globe & Mail.

Deal number two has the Leafs acquiring Giguere in exchange for Vesa Toskala and Jason Blake. It’s no secret that Toskala has struggled in net this season for Toronto and with Jonas Gustavsson on a one-year deal, Burke felt the need to upgrade the goaltending position and take on Giguere’s $6 million cap hit which runs through next season. Anaheim takes on two more seasons of Blake with a $4 million cap hit while Toskala and his $4 million salary will become an unrestricted free agent in July.

There was a lot of excitement around Toronto this past summer when Burke brought in players like Mike Komisarek, Phil Kessel and Francois Beauchemin, but those moves and shaky goaltending have rewarded the Leafs with the last spot in the Eastern Conference as of today. With 26 games to go in the regular season and Toronto 11 points from the eighth spot in the East, the excitement from the summer is back, but expectations to make the 2010 NHL playoffs have been replaced with confidence in next season’s team.

Burke is already being lauded for the moves as what went down this afternoon could be a domino that sets off plenty of other movement around the league as the Olympic trade freeze and March trade deadline creeps up.

Pass or Fail: Coaches’ replay challenges in NHL for divisive calls

Cheap penalties, bushels of turnovers, endless replay reviews, protracted overtimes … remind us again why the NFL gets about 10-times the viewership of the NHL? (Oh, that’s right: People can follow the ball easily on television. That must be it.)

The overtime between the Minnesota Vikings and the New Orleans Saints was like being caught in the seventh level of “booth review” hell, in which seemingly every play was given a second glance. It’s a miracle the game-winning field goal was allowed to stand without a referee under a hood to ensure it wasn’t an optical illusion.

Many NFL fans believe replay is a necessary evil, slowing the game down to a sleeping snail’s pace while making sure the correct call is made. (Much less evil on television than in the stadium, mind you). NHL fans feel much the same, although faith in the Toronto “War Room” has plummeted thanks to some baffling decisions and allegedly isolated cases of chicanery.

Calls to expand replay are always controversial, and CBC Sports’ contributor Elliotte Friedman offered a tantalizing new option this weekend that’s causing a stir: Instituting a coach’s challenge for certain plays. (Find an earlier discussion about it on the CBS Sportline boards, of all places.)

There was an incident in a game on Jan. 19 between Montreal and St. Louis when Habs’ defenceman Roman Hamrlik was called for delay of game. Some replays indicated the puck deflected off a stick before going into the crowd, which should have negated the infraction.

Those are the types of plays the league might consider using the challenge for, Friedman said. Teams would receive one challenge per game, and they would lose their timeout if they were wrong. If the team had already used its timeout, it would receive a delay of game penalty.

Love it. Absolutely love it. Love it for the pucks off the netting that referees miss. Love it for the delay of game penalties the referees get wrong on split-second deflections, like the one that affected the Montreal Canadiens. Love it for bang-bang icing plays late in a game that refs miss. Heck, we’d take it one step further than the NFL: What about challenging five-minute high-sticking majors that a coach suspects may have been caused by an opponent-on-opponent accident? Restrict the coaches’ challenges to that specific major penalty; it could work.