S12 OTHEGLOBEANDMAIL | SATURDAY,FEBRUARY22,2020
He is a talented scorer, but it is
still to be seen if the Coyotes will
reap a reward. Hall’s contract ex-
pires following this season – after
which he could sign elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the team is suddenly
sputtering.
Trades are a tricky business
and can make or break a season.
There are many factors to consid-
er: the size and length of a con-
tract of the player of interest; if he
is about to become a free agent; is
it worth bringing him in for a
short-term rental; and, how
much money a team has at its
disposal.
The maximum any organiza-
tion can spend on salaries this
season is US$81.5-million. Cre-
ative accounting and juggling are
assets wielded by well-heeled
teams.
In Toronto, Clifford filled a
need the Maple Leafs had for a
guy with a nasty streak, which its
roster was lacking. His role seems
incongruous with the fellow who
shags pucks with his little boys
during practice with his team-
mates.
But that is the way athletes, in-
cluding hockey players, are. They
can be enigmas.
“I want to get them on the ice
as best as I can,” Clifford says as
he unties their skates in front of
his dressing stall. “They want to
be a part of this, and we have to
get them out of the hotel as much
as possible. They are not in
school yet.”
Brody, the five-year-old, dash-
es around with his hockey stick as
his father talks. Then he returns,
eyes wide.
“Daddy,” he whispers, “You are
only four [stalls] away from Aus-
ton Matthews!”
SPEZZAHASSEEN
THEUPHEAVALOFTRADES
In 16-plus seasons in the NHL, Ja-
son Spezza has had 62 team-
mates traded.
“It can be really difficult,” says
the Maple Leafs centre, 36. Toron-
to is his third team.
“In terms of the emotional
side, it varies depending on
where you are in your career.
Early on, I was happy to see guys
moved because I knew it would
give someone younger a chance.
Later, I found it changed our lock-
er room.
“So there are different levels of
feeling at different times.”
Spezza played for the Ottawa
Senators from 2002 to 2014 and
for the Dallas Stars, to whom he
was traded during the off-season,
from 2014 to 2019. Last summer,
he signed as a free agent with To-
ronto to play in his hometown.
Over the years, he has been a
witness to trades that involved
many high-profile teammates,
including Mike Fisher, Sergei
Gonchar, Dany Heatley, Martin
Havlat, Marian Hossa, Alexei Ko-
valev and Bryan Smolinski.
He remembers feeling trou-
bled when six teammates were
dispatched from Ottawa in 2011
around the trade deadline. Fisher
and Kovalev were among them.
“You expect trades to happen,
but it is never easy,” Spezza says.
“That year in particular, it made
me feel like we had failed as a
group and had let people down.”
In 2014, even though he asked
the Senators to trade him, he still
wrestled with his emotions.
“You hem and you haw,” Spez-
za says. “Ottawa was a place
where I had been captain for 12
years. I wondered if I was doing
the right thing. I would never say
there wasn’t any angst.”
Spezza said the off-season
move to Toronto, while welcome,
was the most challenging for him
and his wife, Jennifer. They have
daughters ages 4, 6, 8 and 10.
“Probably this move was the
most complicated,” Spezza says.
“I was coming home, but the girls
are school-aged now and they
had a life and friends in Dallas.”
Jason Zucker was traded from
Minnesota to Pittsburgh on Feb.
- The 28-year-old had played
456 games for the Wild since
making his NHL debut in 2012. He
is the first and only Nevada-
raised player in NHL history.
“There were rumours going
around but I didn’t really know if
a trade was coming,” Zucker says.
“It was hectic for sure.”
He and his wife, Carly Aplin, a
sports TV and radio host, have
three children between them.
Their oldest is in fourth grade.
“It was bittersweet when I
heard,” Zucker says. “I was excit-
ed for an opportunity to come to
an organization that has a chance
to make the playoffs, but Minne-
sota has been my home for eight
years.”
Zucker and his wife woke up
their eldest daughter to tell her
he had been traded.
“Typically, I bring her to school
so I wanted to explain every-
thing,” he says.
He said it was always difficult
for to watch teammates leave af-
ter they were traded.
Jared McCann, a Penguins cen-
tre, is 23 and has been traded
twice. A year ago, he and team-
mate Nick Bjugstad were ac-
quired from Florida a few weeks
before the deadline. “I had no
idea at all anything was going to
happen,” McCann says.
He had gone to a morning
skate in Sunrise, Fla., went home
and was napping when Bjugstad
called. “Do you want me to get
your stuff and bring it from the
rink?” Bjugstad asked, startling
him. Until then, McCann had not
heard the news. Previously, he
was traded from Vancouver to
Florida.
“It is difficult,” he said. “A lot of
things go through your mind.
You wonder, ‘What did I do
wrong?’ and, ‘Why did they do
that to me?’ ”GRETZKY’STRADEWAS
THEBIGGESTOFTHEMALLThe most seismic trade in hockey
history, and perhaps in all sports,
occurred on Aug. 9, 1988, when
Wayne Gretzky and two Edmon-
ton teammates were sent to Los
Angeles for two players, three
first-round draft picks and US$15-
million.
The thought that Gretzky, ar-
guably the most revered player in
NHL history, was being sent to a
U.S. team so appalled Canadians
that an attempt was made in Par-
liament to derail the agreement.
“Everyone in Edmonton want-
ed to hang me,” Peter Pockling-
ton, the Oilers owner at the time,
said this week by telephone from
his home in California. He is 78.
“I’m sure they’ll put, ‘You ass, you
traded the Great One’ on my
tombstone.’ ”
Pocklington says that, like oth-
er Canadian NHL teams, the Oil-
ers were badly hurt by a soft Can-adian dollar. (All NHL players are
paid in U.S. currency). He also
said the team’s television con-
tract was very minimal and that,
in such a market, there was only
so much he could charge for tick-
ets.
He knew he would no longer
be able to afford Gretzky when
his contract expired.
“There was a lot of pressure to
do what I did,” Pocklington says.
“You don’t create wealth out of
the air. I had no choice. It took me
six weeks to come to terms with
my emotions. It took me that
long to come to grips with the
fact that I had to do it. I was his
biggest fan. I loved the guy.”
Gretzky cried during the news
conference in Edmonton where
his trade was revealed.
“The one thing I regret is that
when he shed a tear, I should
have gone over and put my arm
around him and said, ‘Wayne, it’s
off. Never mind.’ ”
Kevin Lowe, the the vice-chair-
man of the Oilers Entertainment
Group, was one of Gretzky’s
teammates at the time. He won
four Stanley Cups with Gretzky,
and two others. When Gretzky
was traded, Lowe was on a golf
course in Newfoundland playing
in a charity tournament run by
Bob Cole. He was playing in a
foursome with Marty McSorley,
who also got shipped to Los An-
geles in the same deal.
“He got called to the clubhouse
for a phone call and never came
back,” Lowe says.
While shocked, he says he did
not feel angry or emotional.
“I always subscribed to the the-
ory that hockey is a business and
I guess that cemented the theory
for me,” he says. “But there were
guys that really took it hard on
the team to the point that it af-
fected their performance.”IT’SNOTPERSONAL,
IT’SSTRICTLYBUSINESSThe emotional wreckage thatoccurs when a player is traded
cannot be underestimated.
Ray Ferraro, who accumulated
nearly 900 points while playing
for six teams over 21 seasons, gets
riled up when he talks about
trades.
He was traded at the deadline
three times. The one that stung
the most happen on March 14,
1996, when the Kings acquired
him from the New York Rangers
for McSorley and Jari Kurri.
“I had just signed a contract
extension the previous July,” Fer-
raro, 55, says. He is currently a
broadcaster for TSN and NBCSN.
“I was not happy to go to a team
that was completely rebuilding.
The whole thing didn’t sit well
with me.”
Ferraro was at home when Co-
lin Campbell, the Rangers coach,
called him and told him he was
headed for a new team. The next
morning, he was on a plane head-
ed for Los Angeles.
“People say it is part of the
business, but until it happens to
you, you don’t understand,” Fer-
raro says. “It stinks.”
In his final season, he was trad-
ed from Atlanta to St. Louis, and
he appreciated it. The Thrashers
were headed nowhere and the
Blues were on their way to the
playoffs.
Traded during a game, he
called St. Louis general manager
Larry Pleau immediately after-
ward.
“He told me, ‘We need you in
the lineup tomorrow,’ ” Ferraro
says. “I asked if I could at least
wait to travel until after I saw my
kids the next morning before
they headed to school. I left and
was gone for six weeks until the
end of the season.”
Even though the circumstanc-
es were better, it was still a diffi-
cult transition for him.
“I got to St. Louis and didn’t re-
ally know anybody,” he says. “It is
a strange part of a hockey player’s
existence. You walk into the
dressing room and don’t know
anything about most of the guysor how the dynamics work, and
then you try to assimilate into a
team dynamic you know nothing
about.
“And hockey is the easy part.
The game is the game. But when
it comes to your life, nothing is
the same. You live in a hotel
room, your family isn’t there,
your teammates don’t know you
and the games are super impor-
tant.
“That is your life.”‘EVERYTHINGINYOUR
LIFECHANGES’In the biggest trade the Maple
Leafs have made in years, they
sent Phil Kessel to Pittsburgh for
three players and a draft pick on
Canada Day in 2016.
One of the most significant
players they have acquired re-
cently was Jake Muzzin, a defen-
ceman they landed from the
Kings with a few days left in Janu-
ary last year.
He had spent parts of eight
seasons with Los Angeles and
won a Stanley Cup there in 2014.
“It’s hard emotionally,” Muz-
zin says. “What I felt at the time
was that I had given everything I
had to the team and organiza-
tion. It shows you how quickly
hockey is a business.” He and his
wife Courtney arrived in Toronto
with 20 suitcases, and lived in a
hotel suite with three dogs, in-
cluding a 120-pound St. Bernard
named Daryl. Courtney was sev-
en-and-a-half months pregnant.
“My wife suddenly had to meet
new doctors and get comfortable
with them,” he says. “There was a
lot of uncertainty. We didn’t have
a house for our child. I didn’t
have a winter coat and had to get
one. When they told me I was
traded, I asked, ‘Are you kidding
me?’
“You feel a little angry. It’s not
that you are getting traded from
one team to another. It is much
bigger than that. Everything in
your life changes.”Trades:It’spartofthebusiness,‘butuntilithappenstoyou,youdon’tunderstand’
FROMS1WayneGretzky,top,wipesawaytearsduringa1988newsconferencetoannouncethebiggesttradeinhockey
history,whenhewasdealtbytheEdmontonOilerstotheLosAngelesKings.LeafsdefencemanJakeMuzzin,
acquiredlastseasonfromtheKings,hadabigadjustmenttomakebecausehiswifewasseven-and-a-half
monthspregnantatthetimeofthetrade.RAYGIGUERE,TOP,ANDFRANKGUNN/THECANADIANPRESSHOCKEY
WINNIPEGTheWinnipegJets
arebringingcentreCodyEakin
home.TheJetsacquiredthe
Winnipeg-borncentrefromthe
VegasGoldenKnightsonFriday
foraconditionalfourth-round
pickin2021.IftheJetsqualify
fortheplayoffsthisyearor
re-signEakintoanewcontract
byJuly5,theJetswilltransfer
their2021third-roundpickto
theGoldenKnights.Eakinis
eligibletobecomeanunrestrict-
edfreeagentthissummer.
Eakin,28,hasfourgoalsandsix
assistsin41gameswithVegas
thisseason.Hehas232pointsin
578careerNHLgameswith
Washington,DallasandVegas.
InBoston,theBruinsfreedup
salarycapspaceFridayby
tradingveteranforwardDavid
Backesandafirst-rounddraft
picktotheAnaheimDucksfor
forwardOndrejKase.Anaheim
alsoacquired20-year-oldpros-
pectAxelAndersson,adefence-
man.TheBruinsbenefitby
tradingBackes,whohasspent
thepastmonthplayinginthe
minors.
THECANADIANPRESS,
WITHAREPORTFROM
THEASSOCIATEDPRESSJETSADDEAKIN,
BRUINSLANDKASE