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A Twitter Trade Deadline Rant

Was Bob Murray's deadline ruined by missing out on Kesler and/or Vanek? (Spoiler: NO!)

By kid ish
Christian Petersen

[Ed. Note:  Those of you who follow Kid ish on twitter may already know that he has some opinions on the MSM coverage of the Ducks' deadline activities.  Luckily Anaheim Calling once had a good Editor and our friend Jen Neale did my job for me, encouraging him to compile his tweets into a blog post for discussion here.  Thus we present Kid ish's twitter rant on why Bob Murray's Trade Deadline wasn't a complete disaster in blog form.  Enjoy and discuss among yourselves.  -CK]

I'll just leave all this here.

My understanding on Ryan Kesler: Pittsburgh was the preferred (possibly only) destination for Vancouver to send Kesler because it is out of conference. Gillis is BIG on shit like that. Vancouver wanted a specific defenseman prospect from Pittsburgh, and they weren't having it. The package they offered was a third line pivot (Brandon Sutter, I think), a first, and a defense prospect that wasn't what Vancouver wanted. Apparently, they said no very early in the day to Pittsburgh, who went out and grabbed Marcel Goc instead.

The "feeling" from all the Gillis coverage is that Vancouver tried to recreate sort of a false market by tossing out Philadelphia as having made a serious offer (Philly denies this, saying they only inquired, because they were working on freeing up space for defense) to get Pittsburgh to reconsider, but that Anaheim's offer was apparently pretty good. Some think Gillis would have accepted it just to get Kesler out and maintain some sort of dignity, but ownership wasn't having it at all because Gillis is probably gone at the end of the season. Letting him deal a solid 2C to a rival is bad biz. But others think Gillis just hates dealing in conference, which is also pretty logical.

A word on this: TSN went all-in on Anaheim being in on Vanek while Pittsburgh was the favorite landing pad for Kesler. Sportsnet went all in on Montreal being in on Vanek. There's probably a bit of a sore spot on the TSN side because they were running with their hunch that was wrong, and their competitors ran with one that was right re: Vanek. Oops.

I think Sami Vatanen was one injury away from being gonezo. He's highly sought, especially after his showing at the Olympics.

Dustin Penner wasn't playing poorly, but there's a bit of a rumor about that Murray was getting peeved again because of motivation/effort. By scratching two hungry wingers per game, the team was giving ice to a guy who they were struggling to motivate well or get consistent effort from again.

This was Murray's complaint about Penner when he wasn't on the team anymore. Steve Simmons, a reporter from the Toronto Sun, sat next to the Anaheim exec suite during the Cup run because he was chummy with Burke then and promised to keep things off the record since the media box was too full. He said all he heard about Penner from Burke, Murray, etc. was that they LOVED his hands but didn't get why he wouldn't play his ass off, considering those hands.

My belief is that this REALLY came to a head with the Olympics. Saku Koivu turned down a very prestigious offer from Finland to rest up for Anaheim. Penner not giving his all coming back from that probably didn't sit well with a management group who had to be convinced by Getzlaf to give Penner a chance in the first place.

Also, Penner was only +2.3 Corsi Rel at the time of trade, meaning he wasn't really driving play on his line as much as his linemates.  We all saw that, and 13 goals from Penner with Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry is pretty average, really. They've done as well with nearly every other LW put there for a time, and Murray wants to let Palmieri and Maroon continue to earn chances there.

Stephane Robidas asked to come to Anaheim, specifically. That's what Eliotte Friedman implied in one of his Twitter convos. Dallas wanted to honor him given that they couldn't promise a playoff berth and his contract running down.

Robidas is awesome. Here's his Extra Skater page. Here's his usage, isolated.

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