Meier deal highlights the Eastern Conference arms race
'It's a powerhouse,' Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald says after acquiring one of the crown jewels of the trade deadline from the San Jose Sharks
The way the Colorado Avalanche have been playing lately, perhaps this will all be moot. Entertaining as all get out, but moot. The defending champions are looking every bit as unbeatable as they did last season now that Nathan MacKinnon has decided he’ll simply put the team on his back. If Cale Makar can sort out his concussion issues and Gabriel Landeskog returns from the knee surgery that has sidelined him all season, the Avs will once again be among the Stanley Cup frontrunners. And don’t forget their secret weapon, which they reacquired over the weekend in Jack Johnson.
But have you noticed what’s going on in the Eastern Conference? As we approach the NHL trade deadline Thursday, the east has become a good, old-fashioned arms race. The chef’s kiss on this came Sunday when the New Jersey Devils announced they had robbed blind made a deal with the San Jose Sharks to get power forward Timo Meier for a package that includes a bunch of futures and a roster player who has six goals in 45 games this season. Getting a three-time 30-goal scorer - one who could get 40 this season and whose rights the Devils control for at least one more season – without giving up a single A-level prospect such as Luke Hughes, Simon Nemec or Alexander Holtz is indeed a fine day’s work for Devils GM Tom Fitzgerald. Oh, did we mention that the Sharks are picking up half the salary cap hit as well?
The deal comes after the New York Islanders, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers and Toronto Maple Leafs all made major moves to get better, and slightly before the Tampa Bay Lightning went out and got another nasty guy who fits the profile of a playoff stud in Tanner Jeannot. And in the coming days, the Rangers will almost certainly get Patrick Kane. Fitzgerald was asked what those deals say about the current state of the Eastern Conference. “My take on it is that everyone wants to put all the really good players in the east,” Fitzgerald said. “It’s a powerhouse. It really is, it really is a powerhouse.”
And that, of course, is reflected in the standings. Six of the top seven points percentages in the NHL currently belong to Eastern Conference teams. If the standings hold up, at least two of those six teams won’t make it out of the first round of the playoffs and at least four of them are guaranteed to be gone by the time the playoffs are half over. So as we all slog through the dog days of winter, we have one heck of a first couple of playoff rounds waiting for us as a reward in April.
While Fitzgerald was swinging for the fences and schooled a rookie GM, veteran hockey man David Poile was conducting his swan song by taking advantage of Tampa’s search for the next Blake Coleman or Barclay Goodrow. Getting a serviceable NHL defenceman and five draft picks for a player who has been mired in a season-long sophomore slump was a huge coup for Poile. Everyone, including Lightning GM Julien BriseBois, knows Tampa overpaid for the player, but they’ll forget that when Jeannot turns on beast mode in the playoffs and/or he recaptures the form that saw him lead all rookies in both goals and penalty minutes last season. He might do both.
There are no secrets here. The Lightning are trying to win another Stanley Cup and think they have a real shot at doing it. They will pay dearly for this down the road…probably. Actually, this is the kind of trade you make even if you’re not going for broke, because if Jeannot can turn things around, he gives you something tangible right now that the picks might never give you. It was the same philosophy BriseBois used last year when he dealt futures to get Brandon Hagel and Nick Paul. “I know there’s a perceived value of those picks,” BriseBois said, “but we have a really good idea of what the actual value of those picks are. None of those players we were going to draft with those picks are going to help us this year or next or probably the year after that. When you put it into that context and frame it that way, it ends up being a pretty easy decision, actually.”
If you want to compete in the Eastern Conference these days, these kinds of upgrades are necessary. And as much as Fitzgerald said his decision to get Meier wasn’t terribly influenced by what others in the Metropolitan Division and the conference have done lately, it was impossible not to notice that every one of them who did deals made major transactions and got tangibly better. “I’m not a reactionary general manager or person,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m very thorough and try to think things out and really stick to a game plan, then maybe you deviate here and there. But Timo Meier was a player we identified from the get-go for a couple of reasons.”
And that’s the thing that makes the deal so stunning. Everyone in the league knew the Devils were the team that could most use Meier and Fitzgerald made it clear that his team coveted the scoring power winger. Why Sharks rookie GM Mike Grier did not tell Fitzgerald, “Don’t even bother calling me until you’re willing to deal one of Hughes, Nemec or Holtz,” is a mystery. All the Sharks really got was a couple of bottom-six forwards, a depth defenceman, two first-round picks and Shakir Mukhamadullin, a defence prospect whose contract with Ufa Salavat in the KHL expires after this season. In its recent Future Watch edition, The Hockey News rated Mukhamadullin as the Devils’ third-best prospect behind Hughes and Nemec (Holtz was considered an NHL player, not a prospect) and was ranked as the 42nd-best prospect outside the NHL.
There is no doubt that Meier’s contract situation complicated any deal the Sharks would make. Having to offer Meier $10 million next season just to keep his rights for one more year is a risk, unless you sign him for seven years at about $7.5 million – which would put him between Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier among Devils forwards. Meanwhile, the Predators trade a guy who makes next to nothing in Jeannot and they get almost as much as the Sharks got for Meier.
Fitzgerald is confident that he’ll be able to sign Meier to a long-term deal and rhymed off the reasons why the Devils will be such a good fit for him. Between the arena and the practice rink being in the same place and the easier travel schedule, “I told Timo, ‘This may add five years to your career,’ ” Fitzgerald said. That will all get worked out in time. For now, though, let’s just enjoy all the excitement and look forward to some really, really good games in the playoffs.