Evaluating ‘The Trade’

After Tuesday night’s game between the Sens and Sharks, the only meeting between the two teams this season, I thought it would be a good time to re-examine the trade this past offseason that saw Milan Michalek, Jonathan Cheechoo and a 2010 second round pick come to Ottawa from San Jose for Dany Heatley and a 2010 fifth round pick.  Of course it’s still way too early to tell who won the trade but it’s becoming more and more apparent that it could become one of those rare types of trades where both teams end up satisfied with what they acquired.

Early on in the season it looked like the Sharks had won the trade in a landslide as Heatley started the season on fire and Michalek  struggled to get accustomed to his new team and his new teammates but as Michalek gets more and more comfortable and starts to catch up to Heatley in goals, the balance of the trade is starting to tilt back in favour of the Sens.  Michalek has been everything Bryan Murray could have hoped for and more, especially lately where he has been a goal scoring machine, scoring 8 goals in his last 8 games.  Michalek excels on the powerplay where he goes to the net and does a good job of screening the other teams’ goalies and is very adept at tipping pucks and burying his chances from in close.  He is also very strong on the penalty kill where his speed helps him get to loose pucks and create chances off the rush.

Heatley, on the other hand, has come as advertised, a goal scoring machine who has one of the quickest, most accurate releases in the league.  His chemistry with linemates Joe Thornton and Patrick Marleau has been a major reason why the Sharks sit in first place in the league and why Steve Yzerman is probably strongly considering inviting all three to suit up for Canada at the Olympics in February.  The three of them have been simply dominant and Heatley is headed towards another 50 goal season which should come as no surprise.  The difference with Heatley is that he is more of a one dimensional player and whereas Michalek does a good job at creating his own chances, Heatley needs somebody like Thornton or Jason Spezza to get him the puck.  Although Heatley does kill penalties at times, he has never been known for his strong defensive play and has a tendency to take games off, something that we have yet to see from Michalek so far this year.

The third player involved in the trade, Jonathan Cheechoo, has been an unmitigated disaster this year as he has scored a measly 2 goals in 25 games and is now playing around 10 minutes a game on the team’s fourth line.  When the Sens acquired Cheechoo, I knew that they were acquiring a player who was a shell of his former self but I had no idea just how far he had fallen.  Cheechoo is one of the slowest players in the league and will probably struggle to score much more than 5 goals this year.  Luckily for the Sens, Cheechoo only has one year left on his contract and will very likely be bought out this offseason as it will be impossible to justify paying a player 3 million dollars a year for his kind of production.

Cheechoo’s poor play aside, the Senators have still done very well for themselves in getting rid of the cancer that Heatley had become in their dressing room and acquiring an extremely valuable player like Michalek.  If you consider that Michalek is a better defensive player, is more physical and aggressive and is much more of a team player, along with the fact that he is younger and has a much smaller cap hit for the same amount of time as Heatley, you have to think that the Sens might have actually won this deal.  I am most certainly biased in my assessment of this trade, especially considering my disdain for Heatley, but the facts show that Michalek is a more valuable player.  Add in the fact that the Sens get an upgrade in this year’s draft and the trade is looking even better from their standpoint.

No doubt the Sharks are happy about their side of the deal as Heatley has helped them get off to a great start but the only thing that matters for them is the playoffs as they try and shake the choker label that they have acquired throughout the years.  Heatley is a great talent but his off ice behaviour speaks for itself and in my opinion the Sens are better off without him, especially considering they got Milan the Magnificient instead.