Epic Win

Leaf's faithful! By now...wait...whoa, there are so many more of you in here. What gives? So all it took to get the bandwagon back to full capacity was a good ol fashioned Calgary coup and previous-cup-winning goalie "trade."

How do we break this down. We've spent a lot of time justifying BB's trades (Kessel) so we don't really know how to break down a trade that seems like we totally took them to school. We gun-shy leaf followers are still waiting for the other shoe to drop, provided you put 2 first round picks in your loafers.

But there doesn't seem to be another shoe and the deals are final. Stajan, Hagman, Mayers and White for Phaneuf, the dude who rescued his father from a frozen pond and then squished people at the world juniors, and some younger, speedier, penalty-killier version of Wallin. Not bad. Calgary obviously wanted Hagman's goals, White's smart puck play, Stajan's afro and Mayers eyebrows. So they have Jay Bouwmeester essentially taking over Dion's spot on the blue line, so he was expendable. Expendable. Dion Phaneuf. Expendable. For three guys not in our long term plans and an arguably valuable dman in talks for a big raise? Done and done! Next.

J.S Giguere. We here at TOV have wanted him for a while; ever since he said he didn't want to stay in Cali. And when Hiller signed a few days ago, we smelt blood in the water. We even proposed Kaberle and Toskala for JSG and Bobby Ryan (who hasn't signed for the Ducks and is looking for big money which they don't have). We thought that was a pretty fair deal. But BB somehow figured out a way for them to palate Jason Blake, the pasty wonder with his anchor of a contract. So it is Blake + Toskala for JSG. Geeze. How does this benefit the Ducks in the long run? At all? Are they really excited about Jason Blake suiting up for them for the next couple of years? Are they really excited that if Hiller snaps his groin they may have Tosaka and Pogge in net? And if we are worried about that 6.0 mil cap hit, it's gone this time next year anyway.

We liked the Kessel trade, but we understood that we had work to do to justify it. But this feels like...well...like we don't have to justify anything. I can't believe we convinced someone Stajan was good, or Blake was the model of economic frugality. Has Phaneuf really fallen off the radar? (note: the biggest downside to Phaneuf playing for the Leafs is having to listen to McGuire say stupid things like "Double decker Dion destruction!" Ugh.)

Can anyone help me out? What are we missing here? I'm actually shocked with this whole thing. Even the cap numbers on our side are ok. Do Giguere and Phaneuf have a high probability of fail? Can anyone explain what either GM's were thinking?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?