Dealer's Choice
NHL Trade Deadline A Frentic Time
GM Patrick Has Kasparaitis and Lang To Dangle
By Bob Grove

Very soon it will be that time of year again. Rumors will be marked down to a nickel a dozen. General managers will attempt to do for the telephone companies what the Christmas season does for toy retailers. Reporters will lend their ears to every nuance of comment from the dressing room.

Players will be pressed for information from their friends. Wives will get nervous. Fans will get anxious. Stanley Cup aspirations will be boosted, payrolls trimmed, futures altered. Such is life leading up to the National Hockey League trading deadline, when general managers get one last chance to fix mistakes, plug holes, rid themselves of underachievers and, in these ridiculous financial times, shed expensive players who either can't be re-resigned or are adamant about playing the field as unrestricted free agents in the summer.

"It's a function of the job," shrugs Penguins' general manager Craig Patrick, who has emerged from past trade deadlines with spectacular successes, regrettable failures and trades of almost every ilk in between.

"Everybody gets antsy. They don't want to miss anything, so they're on the phone a little more regularly. We talk regularly now, but when we get closer to the deadline, you might talk to the same GM two or three times a day. Right now, it's just making sure you're touching base every second or third day. But it heats up as you approach the deadline."

The deadline hits at 3 p.m. EST Tuesday, March 19, although that date might have less significance for the Penguins now than it has ever had in Patrick's 13 seasons with the team. Pittsburgh emerged from the Olympic break late last month seven points out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference, one of six teams essentially competing for the final two post-season spots, and there was little evidence to suggest Patrick would be able to wait three weeks to make a move.

By then it might be too late to prolong the Penguins' streak of 11 straight playoff appearances, an accomplishment in which Patrick rightly takes great pride. The deadline makes things happen, as he always points out, and he doesn't dispute the notion that some teams are forced to wait longer to make deals than they'd like because the environment isn't right until mid-March.

"Everything's timing," he says. "It takes two to dance, and even if I felt there was something I really wanted to do, if the other team is kind of iffy about it, they can wait until March. It's all timing."

Patrick, of course, is himself fond of waiting and has never failed to make at least one deal on or near every deadline. But just as the Penguins' post-Olympic challenge might force his hand early this season, it also might cause him to do another unusual thing: "rent" a player.

Critics of the trading deadline believe it should fall earlier in the season to discourage teams from acquiring, very late in the season, players whom they are unlikely to be able to sign after the season. Because NHL players are paid only until the end of the regular season, which this spring falls three and one-half weeks after the deadline, even teams with budget problems are able to acquire expensive talent for a playoff drive.

"I don't think it should be changed," says Patrick. "I like it where it is. There's a good reason to have it there: if you're in a battle for a playoff spot like we are, and you need to get somebody that somebody's not going to use beyond this year, you can rent him, really, for the rest of the year. It could be helpful, especially this year when we've had so many injuries. You kind of deserve the right to be able to do that."

Money Talks

Salary considerations have always factored into trade talks, but never have they played as large a role in those discussions as they do today. That has made it even more difficult to complete deals that in every other way make sense for both teams.

"It definitely is harder. The financial restrictions on teams. . . we aren't as restricted as a lot of other teams, because a lot of them are up against their budget wall," says Patrick. "We have some flexibility. But it's hard to make a deal, even with that flexibility, because others can't do things."

Of course, while Patrick is on the phone trying to improve his team, 29 other general managers are attempting to do the same. That creates another challenge for general managers, who must also monitor as closely as possible the talks going on around the league. There should be more talking done earlier this season, because GMs had little else to do during the Olympic shutdown, when the NHL froze all rosters.

"You have to know what everybody else has in mind, what they're trying to change on their team - even if you don't know the specifics of who they might or might not move," says Patrick. "You have to be aware of what other teams are trying to do, because sometimes. . . we've been able to do it in the past, where you bring two or three teams together to fit the pieces that need to be fit together. You have to aware of those things."

The most notable example of that was the three-way trade Patrick made with Los Angeles and Philadelphia in February 1992, sending Paul Coffey to the Kings for Jeff Chychrun, Brian Benning and a first-round draft pick and then dealing Benning, Mark Recchi and the pick to the Flyers for Rick Tocchet, Kjell Samuelsson and Ken Wregget.

Patrick On The Prowl

Unlike last season, when he made what turned out to be a brilliant deadline move by dealing Jeff Norton to San Jose for Johan Hedberg and the now-departed Bobby Dollas, Patrick doesn't have to find a goaltender. But he seemed to have plenty of other needs:

o   A puck-rushing defenseman to play the point on the power play opposite either Alexei Kovalev or Martin Straka, who appeared certain to return to the lineup by early this month at the latest. The rumor mill had the Penguins interested in Philadelphia defenseman Eric Desjardins, who was having a miserable offensive season but would nonetheless help, although he has a year remaining on a contract that pays him $4 million this season; or Edmonton's Tom Poti, who reportedly was being pursued by every team this side of Helsinki.

o   A proven goal-scorer was needed earlier this season while Straka, Kovalev and Mario Lemieux were out of the lineup with injuries, but Patrick sat tight. These guys are difficult to obtain in this day and age, when goals are hard to come by on most nights, and this need becomes less glaring if Aleksey Morozov's sudden offensive development is for real. Morozov could play alongside Lemieux and Jan Hrdina, leaving coach Rick Kehoe to reunite Kovalev, Straka and Robert Lang.

o   A strong faceoff man who can play on the third line and kill penalties. With Wayne Primeau gone for the season with a knee injury, the Penguins have no one they can count on to win a crucial faceoff. No one. Even Hrdina, their best faceoff man, is having a dismal season - when he does take faceoffs, which hasn't been often.

o   A defenseman who clears the front of the net. Hey, if Bob Boughner can be acquired at the deadline (Patrick sent Pavel Skrbek to Nashville for Boughner in March 2000), why not someone like him? Sure, everybody wants tough defensemen. But you never know until you ask.

What might Patrick have to offer? The obvious answers would be Lang, who is earning $2.9 million this season and will become an unrestricted free agent this summer, and defenseman Darius Kasparaitis, who is earning $1.1 million this season and believes he will become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

Kasparaitis made an unprecedented move last summer when he showed up for an arbitration hearing and announced he would accept the Penguins' initial contract offer, a two-year deal. That, his agent declared, would this summer make him a 10-year NHL veteran earning less than the league's average salary ($1.4 million), thereby allowing him to walk away from the second year of a contract awarded by an arbitrator and become an unrestricted free agent as outlined in the league's collective bargaining agreement.

Teams with no interest in re-signing players who are about to become unrestricted free agents, of course, almost always trade them before the deadline to ensure some return - however little.

Patrick certainly seems uninterested in re-signing Kasparaitis, who should view this as his last opportunity to secure a big contract before the current CBA expires in the fall of 2004, perhaps setting the stage for a labor dispute and the establishment of a salary cap.

While interest in Kasparaitis around the league is high, it is not inconceivable that Patrick will hold onto the defenseman and challenge the NHL Players Association's reading of the rule cited by Kasparaitis in declaring himself a free agent this summer. Pittsburgh could argue that the contract signed by Kasparaitis was not the product of arbitration, even though a hearing had been convened. There is a huge element of risk for Patrick in that approach, however, because if Kasparaitis successfully attains unrestricted status, he will walk away and leave the Penguins nothing in return.

Lang's game is a perfect fit for the Penguins, and especially for linemates Straka and Kovalev, but Patrick apparently has not initiated any contract talks this season. There will certainly be interest in Lang, although to be effective he needs to play on a skating, creative team like the New York Rangers or Edmonton Oilers. If there is any uncertainty on the Penguins' part about their desire or ability to sign him, however, then Lang must be traded.

No matter what happens, we can be sure of this much: between the resumption of the NHL schedule late last month and the coming March 19 deadline, Patrick promised to be on the phone quite a bit, discussing many different scenarios in the hope that one works out right. "A lot of things," he says, "get preliminary discussions but they never happen. They fall by the wayside in a hurry."