As if they needed any further proof of his intentions, Calgary Flames' general manager Darryl Sutter demonstrated again on Saturday night that he was in a go-for-it mood heading into the 2007 Stanley Cup playoffs.
For the second time in just over a week, Sutter sacrificed a little bit of the Flames' future to get better in the here and now. Sutter acquired two player rentals from the Boston Bruins, defenceman Brad Stuart and centre Wayne Primeau. In exchange, he surrendered Chuck Kobasew, a first-round choice from the 2001 entry draft, plus Andrew Ference, a steady but undersized minute-munching defenceman.
Stuart and Primeau were two-thirds of the package that the Bruins received last season from the San Jose Sharks for Joe Thornton. With both players headed towards unrestricted free agency this summer, the Bruins put them on the trading block some weeks ago, with a view to exchanging them for younger assets. They are in a rebuilding mode, more concerned about the future than the present. Stuart provides an upgrade over Ference, someone who can play among the team's top-four defencemen on a regular basis. The thinking is that he will play with Robyn Regehr, while the Flames will leave their other unit, Roman Hamrlik and Dion Phaneuf, intact.
Stuart may be only a short-term solution, however, given that he will probably be seeking a multi-year contract in the $4-million (U.S.) annual range next summer, a deal that Calgary may have a hard time fitting into its salary cap. Primeau provides size and defensive help at centre, a position the Flames began to bolster last week when they sent two draft choices, plus Jamie Lundmark, to the Los Angeles Kings for Craig Conroy. With all hands on deck, the Flames now have a crowd down the middle — Conroy, Daymond Langkow, Matthew Lombardi, Stephane Yelle and Primeau.
Kobasew started the season as the team's No. 2 right winger, but had difficulty finding his scoring touch. He had been limited to 40 games because of injuries, first a concussion and more recently, a broken elbow. However, he is signed through 2008-09 for an average of $1.2-million.
Ference took a bargain-basement four-year contract worth $750,000 per season last year, mostly because he wanted to stay in the Flames organization. That contract — minimum dollars, long term — made him an attractive commodity as trade bait.
Calgary gets $3.2-million in contracts coming in and had $1.97-million in contracts going out. On a pro-rated basis, with about $1.2-million left in salary cap room, they were able to fit those dollars under the $44-million ceiling.
For Sutter, a long-time coach in the San Jose system prior to joining the Flames, it was just one more attempt to reassemble his former Sharks team in Calgary, something that should help make Stuart's transition to Calgary relatively uncomplicated. Former Sharks teammates Miikka Kiprusoff, Jeff Friesen and Andrei Zyuzin are on the current Flames roster. In addition, Stuart also played a year of junior hockey in Calgary for the Western Hockey League's Hitmen.
Naturally, the true measure of the deal won't be known for years. If Stuart and Primeau can contribute to another long playoff run for the Flames — a la 2004, when they advanced to the Stanley Cup final — then the deal will be well worth the price that Calgary paid, no matter how much Ference and Kobasew produce for the Bruins.
From a Bruins perspective, Kobasew represented the key acquisition. Ference is a what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of player — smart and insightful off the ice, a warrior on the ice. He was one of their most consistent players in a first-round upset loss to Anaheim last season.
Kobasew, meanwhile, possesses a potential upside. As a junior — and in his one full minor-league season, played during the NHL lockout — he demonstrated a scoring touch, one that he hasn't been able to duplicate at the NHL level. If he evolves into a reliable 30-goal scorer, the deal may come back to haunt the Flames years down the road. The Flames were clearly gambling that he has more or less peaked already and that while he can provide energy and speed to a team, he might not ever be able to find the scoring range.
Ultimately, their focus isn't years down the road anyway — it is this year and next. As a GM, Sutter signed all his most important players — including Kiprusoff, the reigning Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender, and team captain Jarome Iginla, a former NHL scoring champion — to multi-year contracts, most of which expire at the end of the 2007-08 season. At that point, the team may find it cannot keep its core group together. So if the window is short, the Flames' philosophy is clearly to go for it now and then let the chips fall where they may.
On paper, they probably weren't good enough to compete with the Western Conference powerhouses a fortnight ago, when Sutter began his wheeling and dealing. Only time will tell if the upgrades he made with two bold pre-emptive strikes, made well before the Feb. 27 trading deadline, can close the gap and ultimately get them over the top — or if they will continue to muddle along, with a good-but-not great team that doesn't quite match up to the competition.
