A rare occurrence took place on Thursday as the Montreal
Canadiens and Toronto Maple Leafs, hockey’s long time arch-rivals, swung a
trade.
The Canadiens shipped young center Mikhail Grabovski to the
Leafs in exchange for prospect defenseman Greg Pateryn and a second round pick
in 2010.
Grabovski showed promise In his limited time with the
Canadiens but was unable to crack the roster full time last season, and at one
point left the team in the midst of a US west coast road trip to fly to Los
Angeles and confer with his agent, who advised him to return to the Habs.
The Canadiens have $10 million in available cap space but
have several young free agents to re-sign and are expected to land a veteran
forward from the UFA market, making Grabovski expendable.
For a rebuilding Maple Leafs team thin at center Grabovski
could be a good fit and should get much more playing time in Toronto than he
got in Montreal.
Being from Hamilton, I watched him quite a bit. He is a promising player that has very good hockey sense. I think this is a real good pickup for the Leafs.
I'm not doubting that this guy may turn out to be an okay player, but I'm wondering whatever happened to the Leafs stated desire to hold on to their higher draft picks (and we all know that their picks will be high ones). It's almost comical the way Fletcher will say something one month and then act in a completely opposite fashion the next. I'd laugh if I wasn't crying! I guess the Leafs know that their record of drafting is less than stellar and figure they might as well get another player for the Marlies as that's all they can hope for anyway. Interesting also that there is so much interest in players that the Leafs deem dispensible; they all got gobbled up pretty quickly. Is Stajan far behind?
I'm Lyle Richardson, also known as Spector, Foxsports.com 's "Prince of Pucks".,which is based on the fact I live in Prince Edward Island, Canada and I couldn't think of a better byline. I've been an NHL hockey commentator since 1998 on my website, Spector's Hockey, and I'm a contributing writer for Foxsports.com , The Hockey News and Eishockey News. I'm also a regular on The Faceoff Hockey Show and a frequent guest on "The Late Crew" on The Team 1200 Ottawa.
