Phaneuf Trade

If you follow hockey at all you have heard about the Dione Phaneuf trade out of Calgary. Calgary's GM Darryl Sutter obviously had reasons for making the 7 player trade including: Phaneuf (D), Keith Aulie (D), and Fredrik Sjostrom (F) for Matt Stajan (F), Jamal Meyers (F), Ian White (D), and Niklas Hagman (D). This does have good points for each team. The leafs hired a new GM at the start of the year Brian Burke who has won a Stanley Cup with the Anaheim Ducks. At the start of the year he said he was going to try to make the leafs a lot tougher and Phaneuf will help reshape the team with his devastating hits and the ability to drop the gloves. The leafs have also made room up front for Christian Hanson who was a star with Notre Dame. Hanson is the son of the famous Dave Hanson from the Slap Shot movies. If he is anything like his dad in the movie this will also add alot of toughness to the Leafs.

Phaneuf who was considered one of the best defencemen from Canada will be missed in the Flames line up. The Flames also have another very good defencemen Jay Boumeister who is coming into his own. If he can step up to a little extra playing time and keep producing the Flames defence should be fine. The Flames recently have been lacking the ability to score goals so Hagman and Stajan should be able to help out offensively. Stajan right now is on pace for having a career year with 61 points.

Darryl Sutter has been a busy man as of late he has also traded away Olli Jokenin and Brandon Prust to the Rangers for former Buffalo Sabres Ales Kotalik and Christopher Higgins. Kotalik and Higgins are also goal scorers and should help out the Flames offense not only this year but for years to come. Olli Jokenin is a very good player but how could you not be playing along side one of the top players in the entire NHL Jerome Iginla.

I guess we will see if all of the trades will pay off for the Flames in the next few weeks.