The problem with writing about the trade market at this time of year is that halfway through a take, market conditions could be very different from when they started.
Take, for example, the ongoing Mark Stone saga. Everyone agreed for months that he should be traded. More recently, Bob McKenzie told us that everyone kind of saw yesterday as the do-or-die moment for even putting the guy on the market, and Pierre LeBrun followed that up by saying (in so many words) teams were sick of waiting for Pierre Dorion to pull the trigger on even making a decision, and were moving on to other options, like all the pending UFAs the Rangers have on offer.
Just like that, the trade market shifted, and might have left the Senators holding the bag. Which is why it’s important for teams to get out in front of the pack on selling useful players off, because you might be able to milk a better price out of another team if you wait, but also: you might not.
Which is why I liked the Wild’s decision to trade Charlie Coyle to his hometown Bruins for Ryan Donato and a fifth-round pick. Donato came into pro hockey with a great college and Olympic track record, then performed pretty well for the Bruins down the stretch. This year has been more of a struggle, with just nine points in 34 NHL games, and 7-5-12 down in Providence. Not bad numbers, certainly, and he still won’t be 23 until April, but the Bruins don’t need not-bad-and-still-learning anymore.
Coyle, on the other hand, is a guy who is very definitively an NHLer and can help in a middle-six role right away. Donato recently told the Boston Globe that he sees himself as an NHLer as well (leading some to wonder whether he got shipped out for being a malcontent), but the results generally show that, at this point, he’s more of a replacement-level player.
The Bruins, of course, have kind of made trading young high-end players right before they turn into superstars their whole thing in the last decade-plus, but in this particular case it seems like a worthwhile bet. Donato isn’t going to turn into Phil Kessel or Tyler Seguin no matter how hard he tries, and the Bruins got a guy who’s significantly better right now for the stretch run.
Coyle and Donato both play the wing and center, but again Coyle has the track record of being a 40-to-50-point guy who kills penalties a bit, can play fast, chip in on offense and generally be a useful player in a number of roles. The problem for the Bruins is that while he does a lot of things well, he doesn’t do any of them spectacularly, or really even close.
He’s either a linemate for Krejci, or a solid third-line center that becomes decent insurance in case Krejci or Bergeron get hurt and everyone has to shuffle up the depth chart. But that’s all he is: a solid pro who’s signed this year and next at a pretty good price point. And they traded him for relatively little, while Minnesota got a guy who can turn into a Coyle-level producer a couple years from now.
It would be difficult to argue Coyle moves the needle enough to get the Bruins where they need to be. This should be the first of a series of moves.
Maybe the market for Stone shifting and this trade happening within 12 hours or so of each other isn’t a coincidence, but Don Sweeney needs to ante up a bit more and get someone who can really move a needle for them.
Not that you’d ever break up Bergeron, Marchand, and Pastrnak for any extended period of time, but there’s a clear need for someone who can give that already-great power play a little extra menace, and add a little more scoring pop at 5-on-5. After the top line and Krejci, no Bruins forward has more than 29 points. That’s not exactly one-dimensional, but the Bruins’ fatal flaw last playoff was that no one could score without Bergeron on the ice, and that hasn’t really been addressed since.
They don’t need a Mark Stone or Artemi Panarin, necessarily, to make themselves truly dangerous to Toronto or Tampa, but even a Chris Kreider would go a hell of a long way for them just in terms of someone else being able to put the puck in the net reliably.
And unlike a lot of teams that are reportedly in the market for higher-end forwards, Boston’s time to make something happen is right now. Bergeron’s got a lot of miles on him since he became a pro at 18 (more than 1,000 regular-season games, more than 100 in the postseason, Olympics, World Championships, World Cups, the AHL, Switzerland) and at 33 he probably doesn’t have another three or four whacks at this. Doubly true for the iron giant Zdeno Chara: 1,465 NHL regular-season games, 159 in the playoffs, two AHL seasons, a slew of World Championships, Olympics, World Cups, Slovakia, Sweden. David Krejci’s 32. Tuukka Rask, 31. Brad Marchand, 30.
There’s also lots of young talent on the team, for sure. But if you can get a Kreider, a Stone, maybe that window stays open just a year or two longer. Maybe even those additions wouldn’t matter, but Sweeney has to try. Let’s put it this way: They’re pretty much guaranteed to play Toronto in the first round again, and the Leafs are assuredly trying to add.
As a team with this much talent, but so much of it on the wrong side of the aging curve, Boston can’t resign itself to the fate of being mashed into a fine paste by the Lightning. Coyle’s a nice complementary player and he’s in his prime, but if Boston can’t make another deal in the next few days, they might not even get the chance to lose to Tampa.
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Ryan Lambert is a Yahoo! Sports hockey columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.
All stats via Corsica unless otherwise noted.
