The Only Deadline Post Mortem That Matters

Now that we're a few days out, we can sift through what matters and what doesn't after the trade deadline.

We're a couple days out on the trade deadline, and while there was more shuffling than people predicted in a playoff-salary-cap world, it seemingly reinforced all that we already knew.

The real arms race should have been in the Central Division, though it's played out over the past few months instead of few days. The Wild started it just before Christmas by getting Quinn Hughes. As said, when a player like Hughes is on the market, every team should be interested, no matter what their actual strengths and weaknesses are. But that doesn't mean the Wild didn't have some weaknesses after getting Hughes. He may have been the best hat on a hat ever, but he was still kind of a hat on a hat.

Perhaps the Avs are still stinging from the big-game hunting the Stars did last season by eventually picking up the Mikko Rantanen Colorado had previously left on the curb. The Avs have been itchy about their center depth behind Nathan MacKinnon for years, even still after getting Brock Nelson last year. They had hoped Jack Drury would solve the hole they'd had at 3C ever since Nazem Kadri left. He didn't, so I guess if you have a Kadri-shaped hole in your lineup, just go get Kadri back?

Combined with getting Nic Roy from the orphanage fire that is Toronto, Colorado is simply looking at Minnesota's weakness and trying to take that from a gash to a gushing wound. Should the Wild make it to the second round, they'll attack MacKinnon-Nelson-Kadri-Roy down the middle with Hartman-Eriksson Ek-Yarov-McCarron. Good luck with that.

Even the Stars' look of Johnston-Hintze-Duchene looks pretty thin when it locks up with Colorado. Especially as whenever either of these teams even gets to Colorado, they'll have had to go through each other in what should be a hellacious first-round series. It might be a beaten up crew at center, as well as an overmatched one. The Wild may wonder if they should have been in on Kadri very soon.

Instead, the Wild decided on a Foligno family reunion, which will save every other player a lot of interview time but do nothing to make up the talent gap they face at forward with their two main obstacles. It probably plays well with the Wild fans to gin up the grit quotient. It'll play less well when it's all getting skated by in the first round again.

I lauded the Mammoth for realizing what they are, and not spending the trade deadline trying to reverse that with pieces that fit some outdated image of a playoff team. The Ducks clearly got that memo by getting John Carlson from the Caps. Carlson isn't what he was, but he doesn't have to be in Anaheim, who already have LaCombe and Zellwegger. With Carlson, they can rev the engines on every shift, which is what their forwards are built for. Anaheim is still far from finished, but they can look at trying to outgun the Knights or Oilers (even with those two monsters) or Mammoth in the playoffs. They weren't going to beat those teams by trying to slow down.

Meanwhile. on the other side of the coin, the Sabres treated the deadline like it was still 2007, because Logan Stanley and Luke Schenn (who has always sucked), will only serve to slow them down. The Panthers aren't going to be around, kids. Is winning a slob-off with Detroit or Montreal or Tampa really how this team should be going about things? They did kick the tires on Robert Thomas and Colton Burpo in St. Louis, and Thomas might have been a real get as the 2C he's always been, but Jarmo couldn't pull it off. I know you're shocked.

No one outside Detroit ever feels comfortable criticizing the YzerPlan, though Wings fans have gotten a little weary. Yes, the playoff drought may come to an end, but giving up a first and a third for the corpse of Justin Faulk is curious. He's just not the player he was, and Ben Chiarot is too stupid to cover for him. Faulk is too old to cover for Chiarot. Replacing Chiarot entirely probably should have been the goal. Faulk doesn't really do anything that well anymore, and the Wings seem stuck in-between what team they want to try to be. It's enough to play beyond the 82 this spring, which is maybe all they want at Pizza!PizzArena!. But in a soupy Atlantic, they could aim higher.

Overall, the trade deadline didn't really alter how we all see the playoffs. The Central winner is a massive favorite. The East in confusing as fuck, and the Lightning have the best memory on how to do things left. No one trusts the Canes. It's a lot of noise to be left where we were to begin with.