Another week, more new Sharks.  Colin White and James Sheppard join San Jose, and Mike and Doug break it all down (albeit posted late).

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Another week, another huge trade with Minnesota.  This time Dany Heatley is shipped for Martin Havlat.  Mike and Doug try to deal with their collective shock and look at the trade objectively.  Also, with so many other signings in the past week around the league, they try to find the winners and losers in the group.

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In a move that no one could have predicted, even with a Ouija board (which makes it standard Doug Wilson), the Sharks traded one of the best scorers of the past decade, Dany Heatley, for Minnesota’s top scorer, Martin Havlat.

My initial reaction is that, player for player, this deal is terrible for the Sharks.  As I tweeted a few minutes ago, before this admittedly disappointing and sub-par year for Heatley, Havlat’s best season would have been Heatley’s worst.  It’s not a trade for value.  It’s a trade for a team that’s looking to shed salary.

That being said, this trade happened for one or more of the following reasons:

1. The Sharks no longer wanted Heatley around.
2. The Sharks needed to shed salary to make room for another signing or trade.
3. The Sharks just want to save some cash.

I can’t think of any more reasons than these.  If the Sharks wanted Havlat so badly, couldn’t the deal have been made without Heatley being a part of it?  After talking with Doug just now, it’s probably a combination of all three.  The Sharks have two big players’ contracts up this time next year- Couture and Burns.  If you give Burns $5M or so, and you have to pay Couture $3-4M, there’s not a whole lot of room left.  By CapGeek’s numbers, that’s 12 players signed, with around $9m in cap room for 9 players.  That’s a tight squeeze.  If I try to put on my “DW is all-knowing” hat, which I seem to have misplaced, he saw that writing on the wall, saw the opportunity to move an odious contract, and took it, getting a guy that has the kinds of skill that DW thinks the team needs.

More later.

No Tooth. No Shirt. No Problem. I'm Brent Burns baby.

Really quick post. We’ll have more coverage on the podcast next week.

As we do every late-June, Mike and I sit around and watch the NHL Draft and lament how nothing happens for San Jose. There have been some big moves in the last 24 hours and the Sharks just joined the party in a major way.  San Jose landed a legitimate top pairing d-man in Brent Burns and a 2012 2nd rounder from Minnesota for Devin Setoguchi, top prospect Charlie Coyle and our 2011 1st round draft pick. A heavy price to pay, but think about it this way, the Sharks just got a player in Burns who led their team in time on ice, 2nd in PK time and 2nd in PP time. He is 6’5, hits, blocks shots and had 46 points last year with 17 goals. If Burns were a UFA on July 1st, he would have been the top rated defensemen on the market, in the Dudes’ opinions.

It should be noted that Todd McLellan coached Burns in the AHL in 2004-05, so he’s clearly familiar with the player and what he can offer. We’ve been begging for a partner for Boyle and we finally got him. It should be noted that with Burns on the team, the Sharks still have 9.5M in cap space (including the bonus cushion) and that’s plenty of room to add two quality 3rd line players on the UFA market, a position that Doug Wilson could be competitive in. I think it’s not too far fetched to expect Doug Wilson to be a major player on July 1st for impact 3rd line players like Maxim Talbot, Pascal Dupuis, Marty Reasoner, Scottie Upshall, Eric Belanger, Vernon Fiddler, or John Madden. Form a legit 3rd line that can take our top players to the next level, battle and do the dirty work while chipping in some key goals.

It’s a high price to pay but this could be a big first step for the Sharks 2011-12 run for the Stanley Cup. I’m riding the high. We got a #1 d-man for a 40 point forward, a really good college forward and an unknown prospect.

Have a beer on me. Brent Burns is a Shark kids.

The Dudes are thrilled about the wins over Vancouver and Minnesota, and hope the good streak continues.  Also, the Nabokov saga is interesting fodder for the podcast, as well as your emails…

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The Dudes breathe a sigh of relief because the Sharks have finally ended their jarring 6-game losing streak. Mike and Doug talk about the ‘little things’ the Sharks did right in the game against Minnesota, and try and identify what went wrong during the precipitous slide. The Dudes also give a fantasy league update, take some listener email, and check in with some of the Sharks prospects in various amateur and minor leagues, many of whom are going to the playoffs.

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