This picture has basically nothing to do with the post, outside being commentary on genetics. John Scott/Nathan Gerbe

Some humans are just built for athletic competition, which is sort of unfair for the rest of us. But the same way some people win the money lottery, some people happen to win the genetic one. Lebron James runs like a gazelle, jumps like an Olympian, and, y’know…

…he happens to be 6’8″ of chiseled muscle. If he was only allowed to...

There was once a time in sports fandom – a simpler time, some would say – where fans didn’t know what every player earned. They watched the games, followed their stats, and rooted for the guys they liked best. This is not so much the case anymore, especially when it comes to “serious” sports fans.

Today, every player is viewed through the lens of his contract, which is not entirely unjustified. The NHL is a league with a...

When a player gets traded, he’s immediately got a million things to think of, the least of which is actual hockey. Depending on the guy, there might be family to move, a house to sell and a new one to buy, business relationships to deal with…and they want you on the ice with your new team like 10 minutes after the deal is done.

That first time you step into the new room, head swirling, there’s another bouquet of responsibilities...

Thomas Drance, Scott Lewis and I got together at the end of deadline day to chat about the days biggest deals. Vanek, Moulson, Gaborik, and so on. Here’s what we came up with!

You can download it here,

And listen to it here:

The 2014 iteration of the NHL trade deadline was just a touch more exciting than last season’s. Who was traded last year? The ghost of Tim Thomas from Boston to the Islanders so they could hit the salary floor? I think maybe Erik Cole moved from Montreal to Dallas? Regardless, this season gave us a zillion rumors with big names, and whaddya know, a few of them were even asked to swap jerseys.

One at a time now,...

Garth Snow played deadline roulette, put the Islanders money on black and red, and the ball landed on the double-zero greens. For those of you unfamiliar with that analogy: the Isles managed to lose on deadline day when it was legitimately a hard result to accomplish.

At the start of the year, Long Island had Matt Moulson, a highly coveted asset heading to UFA. They traded him and a first round pick (2014 or 2015), and a second round pick...

DEAL: Marian Gaborik to Los Angeles for a second round pick and a conditional third.

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The Los Angeles Kings are in dire need of scoring, and it wasn’t a fact lost on them. Their current scoring clip is just over two goals per game, which barely bests the two worst-scoring teams in the NHL, Calgary and Buffalo. Enter Marian Gaborik.

The name Marian Gaborik, at this point, is a lot sexier than the player himself. He’s tallied just 14 points...

I was joined by Thomas Drance and Scott Lewis to discuss the days biggest trade to date – Martin St. Louis to the Rangers for Ryan Callahan, a first (2015) and a second (2014). The second can become a first if the Rangers make the Conference Final.

It’s 6:36 minutes long, hope you enjoy. Download here,

Listen here:

DEAL: Martin St. Louis to the NY Rangers for Ryan Callahan, a first (2015), a second (2014) that can become a first if the Rangers make the Conference Final.

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Yesterday I wrote a blurb on the New York Rangers that implied they were one big piece up front from being a legitimate contender in the East. Well, here we are.

Adding Martin St. Louis gives the Rangers one the best top-sixes in the Eastern Conference (possibly the best, actually)...

1) Will Ryan Kesler get traded?

The Canucks seem to be sincere about writing this season off and looking towards the future. If that’s the plan, and for some reason they’d like to part with a big, talented, mean center with cheap term (wait, why is this happening again), they might as well do it sooner than later to maximize return.

So… *peanut vendor cadence*  ”Kesler here…piping hot Ryan Kesler, who wants some Ryan Kesler…??”

2) What are the Ducks...

Depending on who you follow on Twitter, the response you get to certain deals is going to be different. In my case, it involved seeing a whole lotta tweets involving “Canucks” and “rebuilding.” And, in fairness to those people, they are to some extent. They’re not making a push for the Cup, they’re making deals with core assets before they decline and maximizing their return, so…yeah, re-tooling, rebuilding, whatever. They Canucks know they aren’t Cup hopefuls.

But I’m a little...

Fun trade deadline day fact: last year we played a drinking game leading up to it at the old office (well, Archi Zuber and Kyle Smith did), and James Duthie of TSN helped us attempt to put the boys under.

Once again for your viewing pleasure, here’s the video of that experience:

Not every team is built to win the Stanley Cup. That’s obvious, but what I’m saying is, not every team is built trying to win the Stanley Cup. A good number of teams are self-aware about what they are, and would be more than happy just cracking the playoffs, or winning a round or two, depending on their history/roster/pre-season expectations and all that. And, of course, some teams are serious about the big prize.

Now that we’ve got the World’s...

If a team from the Eastern Conference has any shot at winning a Stanley Cup this year, it’s going to be thanks to the West grinding itself into fine powder and the eventual Hunger Games-esque victor being so banged up that they’re not the same hockey team they were at the start of playoffs. And really, that scenario isn’t that far-fetched. The team defenses are generally suffocating out West, so it’s going to take some blood and bruises to create...

Douglas Murray moving at a familiar speed: crawl

The Montreal Canadiens are sporting a very tidy 7-1-2 record over their last ten games. As wins over Pittsburgh and Toronto in their last two contests have demonstrated, you don’t always look good coming out on top. Both games were sloppy, error-filled affairs, but the Canadiens picked up the ever important two points in both games. As far as fanbases of teams currently sitting in playoff positions go, only the Toronto Maple...

The trade deadline is generally a terrible time to acquire players given the circumstances – teams know “buyers” are desperate for that piece to put them over the top, so they pit them against one another, and wham-o, suddenly you’re giving up two second-round picks for a guy you might hesitate to grab off waivers in November. Those bidding wars, they’ll get ya.

There’s also this phenomenon:

Funny how the desirability of a player seems to rise in direct...

If there was any doubt that the Buffalo Sabres were not locked in the throes of a full-scale rebuild, then this past weekend should have squashed any remaining uncertainty on the subject. The Sabres shipped Ryan Miller and Steve Ott to St. Louis for an impressive haul that included Jarolsav Halak, Chris Stewart, prospect William Carrier, a first round draft choice in 2015, and a conditional third round pick in 2016. Less than 24 hours later, the Sabres said goodbye to President...

This post originally ran in March of 2012 – with the trade deadline looking to be fairly active this year, I thought today would be a good day to re-run it.

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Walking into a new dressing room after an in-season trade is never easy. It’s a little bit like switching high schools in the middle of the year – you’re kind of on your own and certain territories need to be respected…only you’re not entirely sure which ones those...

I was fortunate enough to be at the 2012 Winter Classic with Derek Snider and Rob Pizzo doing some work for theScore, and also doing some work on my liver. We shot our videos during the days, and had our nights free to drink some pints and get to know each other. It was there that I was introduced to the concept of “beerability.”

Snider did some hiring for on-air talent, and what they looked for in candidates...

Chemistry is one thing, “handedness” is another

There were two moments in last night’s NHL Revealed that reminded me of one “chemistry” difficulty – knowing what hand your linemates are. I know that sounds like a super easy thing, but it’s funny how you fall into a mental groove when you know, say, both your linemates are left shots. You’re occasionally passing it to a jersey without knowing which linemate it is, and it’s nice to have that default so...

When Martin St. Louis wasn’t initially selected by his own NHL team’s GM for Team Canada, he felt he had been done so wrong that he asked for a trade from the franchise he’s been a part of for 14 years, more or less out of spite.

That comes off as a pretty strong Prima donna move. It comes of as conceited and borderline petty. How unbelievably opaque is that viewpoint from a 38-year-old guy whose one dimension is creating...

Yesterday my Twitter feed flared up after the release of a column about Phil Kessel and how he looked “sluggish” in his return to practice for the Toronto Maple Leafs post-Olympics. I’m not a huge fan of promoting stuff I think isn’t very good (for what should be obvious reasons), but I can’t deny the concept was pretty silly. The guy was probably right, by the way, but it was oh-come-on-able for other reasons.

The NHL’s hottest player in 2014...

Playing defense involves doing a bunch of stuff forwards hate, which basically all boil down to stops and starts. We’re really good at loops and curls, not so much at making adjustments based off reading opponents. We prefer to read the puck (we shouldn’t).

But that’s the reality of playing defense – you often aren’t doing what you want so much as you’re trying to read and react to what opponents are doing. You’re the ego to forwards’ id. In...

Lane MacDermid, left, shown a few different jerseys ago.

Playing hockey for money is pretty awesome. You see, what happens is, you play hockey, and then they give you money. So that’s pretty much why I think it’s cool.

But it does change things – for one, how you play starts to matter. And not “matter” in the youth hockey sense, where playing better might mean you get more ice time, and that’s good because playing hockey is great. It...

I’m still pretty floored by the idea that Nick Backstrom was told he couldn’t participate in the gold medal game of the Olympics because he apparently took Zyrtec-D.

The effect Sudafed (which contains the ingredient pseudoephedrine, hence the name) has on a hockey player’s body likely varies, but in my own experience it made me feel zero percent better, faster, or more awake. I still occasionally took them before games because when you’re competing in athletic competition breathing as clear as...