Kings Moving Up

It used to be that a trade involving Ryan Smyth was front page news. Now, it's an afterthought.

Captain Canada isn't the player he was, but at 33, he was still good enough to get an invite from Steve Yzerman. His move to join the Los Angeles Kings puts him on his fourth team three years, unfortunate for a player who once looked like he was an Edmonton Oiler for life.

Smyth had to waive his no-trade for this deal to happen between the Kings and Avalanche, and apparently didn't resist a la Dany Heatley, who can forget about a deal that would take him to Los Angeles now.

For the Kings, this was their latest move to add experience to an impressive young roster that includes Anze Kopitar, Dustin Brown, Jack Johnson, Alexander Frolov and Drew Doughty. As well as Smyth, the Kings have added Justin Williams at the trade deadline and then signed free agent defenceman Rob Scuderi away from the Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

After missing post-season play every season since last making it in 2002, the Kings may be poised to make it back to the playoffs. They had 79 points last year in the tough Pacific Division.

Colorado, meanwhile, has been looking to dump contracts for a while now, so they were happy to exchange Smyth's deal ($6.25 cap hit, three years left at $6.5 million, $5.5 million, $4.5 million) for the contracts of defenceman Tom Preissing (two more years at $2.75 million) and rearguard Kyle Quincey (two more years at $550,000).

Defenceman Scott Hannan (two more years at $4.5 million) may be the next Avs player to go as Colorado management looks to shed money. The Avalanche are rebuilding around Paul Stastny and newly drafted Matt Duchene, and this is going to take a while. Attendance in Denver after so many years of sellouts will be interesting to watch.

Comments

[Luke]

Hi Damien,

I'd like your take on the highly speculative rumour of LA sending Brayden Schenn + to Toronto for Tomas Kaberle +. Previous to the Smyth trade, the B. Schenn rumours appeared to be only wishful thinking on the part of Leaf fans (including myself). Do you think the departure of two of the King's defence (Preissing, Quincey) gives some validity to LA's interest in Kaberle?

[DamienCox]

Damien here. . .not impossible, I guess, but a rumour, as far as I can tell. Kings couldn've done that at the draft if they'd wanted to, although Burke didn't want to use Kaberle to move up. Anything's possible, but thinking seems to be Leafs want to turn Kaberle into a player, not a prospect.

[Sandy T.]

The easiest way to "turn Kaberle into a player", and a front-line one at that, is leave him right where he is. Now that the Leafs' defence corps is overloaded with stay-at-home types, keeping Kaberle is a must, because they sure don't have anybody on board to replace what he brings to the team. Ian White doesn't, and Anton Stralman definitely won't - probably ever.

[mario]

What we need to do is be patient, teams need certain things going further into a season, and burke needs to show no urgency, karberle will be a much valued prospect come January and if July 1st he could have got kessle, come January it will be that and a bag of chips!

[Marco R]

Lombardi has made it pretty clear in interviews with Rich Hammond of the LA Daily News that most teams know better than to even ask for Schenn. I don't think Lombardi is keen on trading away too much young first round pick talent.

[k.e. slickke]

Shirley there is no rush. The JFJ days of 'gotta get somebody fast to show I'm doing something' are over. Let the GM's on the hotseat (no names Hab fans) rush in and overpay. Once the free agents have dried up there will be teams left with gaping holes and unwieldy cap situations. This is a re-build. Hopefully Burke maintains the old bull's axiom, '...why rush down, when we can walk down and...'

[PlatinumCard]

BTW, I think you were wrong in your assessment of the Smythe trade; it was the biggest hockey story since July 1.

[Duncan]

Mario, the window for shopping Kaberle is small...after that, his no-trade clause re-activates...we cannot trade him in January without his consent.

[game_misconduct]

Schenn is Lombardi's prototypical player. He is not going anywhere, as a matter of fact, it would not suprise me to see Lombardi go after Luke in 4 years. That may be "the last piece" to the cup.