This trade was necessary for the Sharks.  That’s the best spin I can put on it.  I can’t say it was a good trade.  But it was a trade that had to happen, in one form or another.  The Sharks had to clear cap space- that much was known.  The Sharks had too many defensemen- that much was known.  And with one trade, they solved both of those problems.  The partner happened to be Vancouver, and the assets in return happen to be two guys that I personally think will never sniff an NHL roster.  It certainly could have been worse- the Sharks could have had to “McLaren” somebody- that is, waive a decent NHL guy (like Cheechoo) and send him to Worchester solely for the purpose of generating cap room.  That didn’t happen.  For DW to be able to get a deal done  in a free agent market that is nearly as locked up as the credit market was last year this time is actually nothing to sneeze at.  Especially one that cleared that much space.

Make no mistake, this trade was about money- $4.67M.    As Doug said in the last post, they now have enough coin to sign Mitchell and Staubitz, with enough left over for a free agent.  Or maybe they will then be able to make another trade for a big time guy like Kessel or Heatley.  We’ll have lots of fun speculating in the coming weeks about what the Sharks might do with this new flexibility, but at least now we can rest a little easier knowing that the Sharks do have some control over their opening day roster.

The one thing that DW said that I think is the second best thing about this trade, is that there will be real competition for roster spots.  When there were so many injuries in the latter half of last season, the Sharks had to ice whatever they could find.  It helps the team for guys to be looking over their shoulders at either wily veterans (Jed Ortmeyer) or up-and-comers (Logan Couture) looking to take their jobs.

It’s more obvious than ever before that having cap room is actually almost the same as having a player.  Vancouver traded cap space for two players.  If you remember, a few years back the Sharks were on the other side of it- they took on Vladimir Malakhov’s cap hit (but didn’t have to pay his salary) in exchange for a first round pick.  Now with the cap only increasing slightly for 09-10 (and many people think it will actually go down next year) that cap flexibility is more valuable than ever before.  Maybe I’m still wearing rose-colored glasses here, but when Nabby and Marleau come off the books next year, could DW turn that extra flexibility into something even better than Ehrhoff and Lukowich?

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