Last Day of Shopping

Sure the Maple Leafs are getting some nibbles.

How about a deal involving Marcel Mueller of the Marlies? Does that get your blood flowing?

If not Mueller, who has attracted some interest in a minor-type deal, maybe Nicolas Deschamps after his big day on Sunday, and given that Deschamps was acquired by the Leaf organization this season in a deal with Anaheim for Luca Caputi, well, that's sort of trade deadline day material.

Okay, we're reaching.

But after a flurry of interesting deals last week - Jeff Carter to L.A., Marek Zidlicky to New Jersey, Steve Downie to the desert - things got very, very quiet on the weekend, unless you're a member of the Ben Bishop family or, of course, a big Ottawa Senators fan who must think this is one magical season.

Make no mistake about it; the Leafs are open for business. The challenge will be, however, that the kind of trades they're interested in making - hockey trades, to use the common phrase - may not be out there. In other words, deals that aren't about moving a player for distant futures. Brian Burke could probably be coaxed into moving defenceman Luke Schenn, but it would be for another young player currently skating on an NHL roster, not a pick and a 19-year-old, former second round pick labouring in the USHL.

So we'll see. There may not be enough sellers to fuel the market today, but then again, we say that every year and by 3 p.m. sure as Andy Sutton will get suspended again there's been 20 or more deals.

Hope Mueller didn't buy a house in Toronto. . .