The first few deals happened yesterday as the Olympic break freeze was lifted. First off, Jordan Leopold was traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins in exchange for a 2nd round pick; Denis Grebeshkov was also dealt for a 2nd round pick to the Nashville Predators. Three other minor deals happened yesterday:
-St. Louis trades Hannu Toivonen and Danny Richmond to Chicago for Joe Fallon.
-Columbus trades Dylan Reese to NY Islanders for Greg Moore.
-Atlanta trades Nathan Oystrick and a conditional pick in 2011 to Atlanta for Evgeny Artyukhin.
Nothing major has happened as of yet but we expect things to get exciting tomorrow. We know that the Edmonton Oilers, Columbus Blue Jackets, Toronto Maple Leafs and Carolina Hurricaned will all be sellers. This means that you can expect guys like Fernando Pisani, Mike Comrie, Fredrik Modin, Raffi Torres, Milan Jurcina, Lee Stempniak, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Mike Van Ryn, Ray Whitney, Scott Walker, Aaron Ward and Joe Corvo to be dealt tomorrow. All these guys are on teams that are clearly sellers and who will be Unrestricted Free Agents at the end of the season. It will be interesting to see if other teams that are near the playoffs such as the Tampa Bay Lightning deal guys like Jeff Halpern and Alex Tanguay.
I’d also like to announce that Sports Jerseys Canada Blog will follow all the NHL Trade Deadline action starting at 10:00AM and post deals the minute they happen. We invite you to follow us all day long tomorrow.