With the trade deadline one week away, speculation seems to have cooled in the last few days. The calm before the storm? It would certainly appear that way. The league's 30 general managers have assembled in Naples, Florida ostensibly to discuss rule changes and other housekeeping issues. But with all that brass walking the same hallways and gravitating around the same buffet tables, all the focus will be on who's talking to who and about whom.
That being said, rumour junkies shouldn't be holding their breathe for a blockbuster deal to set off a domino effect, at least not this week. Speculation since this morning's announcement that Peter Forsberg won't be returning to the NHL this season has been that the first shoe has dropped and that a flurry of transactions is now on its way down the pipe.
Sorry kids, general managers are smarter than that. The key principle to remember in all this is that the trade deadline crush is a seller's market. A quick look at the standings and the bulk of rumours already being floated over the last couple of weeks reveals there are five sellers and 17 to 20 buyers.
The sellers are teams who have little or no shot at making the playoffs and who have some marketable veteran talent to move. This would include Florida, Toronto, Tampa Bay, Atlanta and Los Angeles but not Edmonton or Chicago who are teams with strong cores but little in the way of attractive accessories.
The buyers, meanwhile, make up the rest of the league, minus a few teams who are looking to stand pat, likely because they like the direction the team is headed in but don't feel they are a move or two away from the cup or a pivotal playoff birth this year (Buffalo and St. Louis are prime examples of this).
The most elementary law of economics tells us that limited supply and overwhelming demand will always lead to high prices. Add a time constraint to that formula and you have a recipe for some serious gauging. The longer buyers in this scenario are made to wait, the more anxious they get that they may be the one left with no dance partner when the music stops. Anxiety breeds desperation and suddenly you have GMs reaching (see Waddell - Tkachuk) which is exactly what sellers are waiting for.
Sundin, Prospal, Richards, Hossa and Jokinen: expect all or most of these names to move, but don't expect it until 48 hours or less before the deadline. And while you're at it, hope your favourite team's GM isn't moving for the wrong reasons, because this year's desperate buyer inevitably becomes next year's seller.
