Down Goes Brown's NHL Weekend Review: Trading Season Has Arrived

This article originally appeared on VICE Sports Canada.

(Editor's note: Sean McIndoe looks back at weekend play in the NHL and the league's biggest storylines. You can follow him on Twitter.)

From opening night of the 2015-16 season through Dec. 14, hockey fans saw exactly one trade involving zero actual NHL players. It was the longest dry spell in memory, and continued a trend that had been building through the years: the art of the deal was dying. The usual suspects were trotted out—the salary cap, league-wide parity, no-trade clauses—but the situation seemed clear. NHL general managers had simply lost the ability and/or desire to make mid-season trades, at least during the long months leading up to the deadline.

A few minor deals to close out December offered some hope, but with apologies to Ben Scrivens, none involved what you'd call big names. But then, last week, the dam broke. The Flyers and Kings kicked things off with a deal that sent Vincent Lecavalier and Luke Schenn to Los Angeles, a move that was primarily a salary dump, granted, but the inclusion of a name as big as Lecavalier in any deal is still enough to raise eyebrows. The week closed with Friday's deal that saw the Rangers send Emerson Etem to Vancouver for a pick and a prospect.

And in between, of course, came the blockbuster, with the Predators and Blue Jackets going gloriously old school with a one-for-one deal that sent Ryan Johansen to Nashville and Seth Jones to Columbus. It was a jaw-dropping move, one that had been suggested for weeks but always seemed too big to ever actually be more than wishful thinking. Both players are young, both are former fourth overall picks, and both have the sort of ceilings that could see them occupying all-star rosters for years to come. And both would have been considered untouchable by most teams in the league, the kind of guys that GMs endlessly assure us they'd never even think about dealing.

Apparently, David Poile and Jarmo Kekäläinen missed that memo, as both saw an opportunity to improve their roster and actually took it. The Blue Jackets have been looking for a stud defenceman for years, and Johansen's apparent stint in the doghouse of new coach John Tortorella nudged him into play. The Predators haven't had a top-tier centre in his prime since… well, ever, and their excellent young blueline was one of the few that could withstand moving someone like Jones. The deal made perfect sense for both sides, which made it no less amazing that both GMs had the guts to pull the trigger.

So what now? You'd have to think that GMs around the league (and especially in the West) will see teams like the Kings and Predators improving and feel some pressure to get to work. And with that whole "You just can't make a big mid-season trade in the salary-cap era" doctrine looking a little less like a reality and a little more like an excuse, there should be more than a few cell phones ringing around the league right now. After all, Jonathan Drouin is still out there, Kevin Shattenkirk appears to have joined the rumor mill, and Travis Hamonic remains in play. And if you want to get really crazy, a resolution to the Steven Stamkos situation still looms in the distance.

There are good fits to be found, and despite what we're constantly told, there's more than enough cap space floating around to make them a reality. History tells us that a league full of timid, risk-adverse GMs will find a way to talk themselves out of actually doing anything. But after all the action of the last few days, that kind of conservative thinking is going to be a tougher sell to anxious fans.

The five teams that appear to have the best shot at winning the Stanley Cup.

5. Florida Panthers (26-12-4, +23 goals differential*)—With yet another win Sunday to extend their winning streak to 12 games, should the Panthers be higher? They probably need to be higher. I don't know what to tell you, I'm just not sold yet. Let's circle back on this next week.

4. Los Angeles Kings (26-12-3, +18)—They could just go ahead and hang the "Pacific Division Champion" banner right now and nobody would mind, right? OK, just checking.

3. Chicago Blackhawks (27-13-4, +21)—Make it seven in a row after Sunday's 6-3 win over the Avalanche. For a team that's supposed to coast through the season and then ramp up when the playoffs arrive, that's downright scary.

2. Dallas Stars (29-11-4, +33)—With only a single shootout win to show for January, the slumping Stars are hanging onto top stop in the Central by a thread. They're idle until Friday, and then kick off a tough three-game California road swing.

1. Washington Capitals (30-7-3, +41)—Remember when suggesting that the Caps were the East's best team, ahead of the Rangers and Habs, was considered a controversial opinion? Yeah, me neither.

The Caps earned two more victories over the weekend, notching a dramatic come-from-behind OT win against the Rangers and a 7-1 blowout over the Senators.

But the wins and losses took a backseat to Alexander Ovechkin, who scored twice in New York and then added two more Sunday, including the historic 500th of his career. With that milestone reached, even his harshest critics have had to acknowledge that he's on pace to become one of the league's all-time greatest goal scorers.

But that's wrong. He's not on pace—he's already there. Ovechkin could retire today, and he'd absolutely belong in the discussion of the greatest pure snipers that the game has ever seen. That's not exactly a radical position to stake out, and it's an argument that's been made before in various spaces. But it's one worth restating, if only to annoy that subsection of fans who've never forgiven Ovechkin for committing the sin of occasionally acting like he enjoys playing hockey.

In terms of raw numbers, Ovechkin is steadily climbing the career goals list, but still sits outside the all-time top 40. He's still trailing names like Peter Bondra, Pierre Turgeon and Pat Verbeek, which reads like a who's who of very-good-but-not-quite-greats. But those players, and most of the others near the top of the career list, played big chunks of their careers in the high-flying 80s and early 90s, while Ovechkin arrived in the middle of the ongoing Dead Puck Era.

Adjust his scoring for era, and Ovechkin rockets into the top 20. Barring injury, he'll pass names like Mike Gartner, Marcel Dionne and Mario Lemieux this year, and may even catch Mark Messier. And he'll have done it in just his 11th season. Relative to his peers at this point in his career, he's been better than immortals like Mike Bossy and Rocket Richard, and right up there with Brett Hull and Lemieux. Only Wayne Gretzky's ridiculous first decade stands out as clearly better, and even that comparison ends up closer than you'd think.

We're watching one of the greatest scores to ever lace up his skates—and perhaps the best, period. If some fans don't realize it, well, we can chalk up yet another victim of the NHL's long-standing inability to fix its scoring woes. But it's time to stop talking about when Ovechkin will join the league's all-time greats. He's already there, and has been for a while.

The five teams that appear to have the best chance of landing Auston Matthews, the likely No. 1 overall pick.

5. Toronto Maple Leafs (16-17-7, -8)—Hey, at least one California team scored a touchdown during the NFL playoff weekend.

4. Calgary Flames (19-19-2, -19)—Karri Ramo is enjoying a sneaky-good season. Well, "enjoying" may not be the right word, given how the team has played in front of him. Enduring? Let's go with enduring.

3. Edmonton Oilers (17-23-3, -25)—They're in last place in the league's worst division and 28th overall, and these days they can't score. They're also just five points out of a playoff spot in the brutal Pacific and expect to get Connor McDavid back after the All-Star Game. Hmm…

2. Buffalo Sabres (16-22-4, -16)—An ugly six-game stretch against some of the league's top teams led to six straight losses before yesterday's win over the Jets. They're better than last year, but that's not saying much.

1. Columbus Blue Jackets (15-24-4, -31)—Why yes, the bottom team in our rankings owns recent wins over each of the top two teams in the rankings, because this is the NHL in the age of parity and we're basically just flipping coins at this point.

So here's a question that has to have occurred to fans and/or writers stuck doing power rankings: What happened to all the bad teams?

A year after the standings featured several teams stumbling through truly embarrassing seasons (which was all just a weird coincidence in a league that assures us that nobody ever tanks for generational players like McDavid), the job of finding five teams worthy of "league worst" status is tougher than ever.

Really, halfway into 2015-16, which teams have truly been disasters? The Blue Jackets, sure, but would you put anybody up there with them? The Sabres are rebuilding and have been markedly better despite losing their starting goalie on opening night. The Oilers lost McDavid, and are still hanging around the playoff race. The Flames have been holding down a postseason spot for much of the year. The Maple Leafs looked awful Saturday, but they own wins over the Kings, Blues and Stars and Mike Babcock is even getting some Jack Adams talk. Heck, fans of the Flames and Maple Leafs could probably make a decent case that their teams shouldn't be in the bottom five at all. But if not them, who?

The Hurricanes? They remain a tough team to figure out, and a record of 17 wins against 25 losses isn't impressive, but their underlying numbers continue to look great.

The Flyers? They've won three straight and are sitting just outside of a playoff spot.

The Avalanche? The advanced stats say they're as brutal as ever, but the win-loss record stubbornly refuses to play along.

Chalk it up to parity and loser points, but this has been a tough year for fans of train wrecks and tire fires, with a ridiculous 25 of the league's 30 teams sitting at .500 or better in terms of points percentage. Even the one truly miserable team just added a 21-year-old future Norris candidate. If that's what rock bottom looks like, plenty of teams would love to sign up.

History tells us that we'll see more separation as the trade deadline nears and teams start to sell—assuming, of course, that anybody actually thinks they're a seller by then. In the meantime, don't be surprised when any of the "bad" teams make a playoff push, or at least something that looks vaguely like one if you squint hard enough. And don't be surprised if this section has been quietly switched over to a bottom one by the end of the year.

• The Sabres' win over the Jets on Sunday marked the first game back in Winnipeg for Evander Kane since he was traded last year. Track-suit wearing fans gave him a rough ride, but he helped wrap up the win with an assist on Sam Reinhart's hat trick goal.

• The Canucks want to trade Chris Higgins, which isn't all that surprising. They announced it by sending out a press release, which, uh, sort of was.

• Switching over to trade targets that other teams will actually want: Drouin scored a pair in his first AHL action of the season. Reports had reps from as many as half of the NHL's teams in attendance.

• Detroit's Jakub Kindl cleared waivers Sunday and will head to the AHL. The former first-round pick has been a healthy scratch lately, and his cap hit of $2.4 million through next year would be enough to scare off most teams.

• The Penguins earned a 3-1 win over the fading Canadiens. That snapped a two-game losing streak and gives them five wins in their last ten, which apparently qualifies as a "surge" in today's NHL.

• The depleted Blues managed three out of four points against the Ducks and Kings, splitting a pair of shootouts. We should get an update on the team's various injuries at some point Monday.

• The Devils snapped a three-game losing streak with a 2-1 decision in Minnesota on Sunday night. The win moves them back into one of the Eastern Conference wild-card spots, knocking the Lightning to the outside.

• Speaking of teams that we all agreed would be terrible but stubbornly refuse to cooperate, the Coyotes have won three straight after Saturday's 4-0 victory over the Predators and have moved back into the second spot in the Pacific.

• Finally, injured Boston Pride forward Denna Laing posted her first update since suffering a spinal cord injury at the Outdoor Women's Classic. Donations to aid in her recovery efforts can be made here.

(A note that the numbers listed here represent true goals differential, based on goals scored and allowed during actual hockey games. That seems like a strange thing to have to specify, but it explains why the numbers often don't match those published by the NHL, which counts shootout wins and losses as goals for and against in their official totals because they really don't want anything about their standings to make sense.)