Today is day - the NHL trade deadline. Between now and 3pm Eastern, 30 teams around the NHL will be buying and selling assets in a frenzy of deadline deals. Some will be adding players to gear up for the final five weeks of the season (and, hopefully, the playoffs). Others will be trying to move extra players for future assets. Last year, there were 22 deals on deadline day, and the Avalanche were involved in one - Jordan Leopold for Ryan Wilson, a 2nd and Lawrence Nycholat.

How busy will the Avalanche be this year? Will they simply sell off some players on expiring contracts, such as Ruslan Salei and Marek Svatos? Will they find a taker for John-Michael Liles and his $4.2 million salary? Will the Avs go old school and surprise everyone with a splashy deadline trade? We'll know the answer to these questions over the next 6 hours.

The MHH team will be around all day today and we'll be updating this post as any Avalanche-related moves (or rumors) come across the wire. We'll also have a post up pretty quickly with analysis of any Avalanche deals.

There are a ton of resources we'll be monitoring throughout the day. Here's a few of the big ones:

TSN's Tradecenter and Sportsnet's Hockey Central are both great resources.

SBN again has a trade deadline hub with all sorts of analysis of trades as they happen.

Puck Daddy has a nice widget up that grabs the Twitter feeds of a bunch of NHL writers.

Adrian Dater will obviously be a big source of Avalanche news today, both via his blog and his Twitter feed

SportsDalaiLama has a Twitter list compiled of MHH members - another solid Twitter resource.

The moves so far (updated throughout the day)

Trade deadline: March 3rd, 1pm MST.

Avalanche Signings/Trades/Moves:

Wojtek Wolski traded to Phoenix for Forwards Peter Mueller and Kevin Porter

Ryan Stoa has been recalled from Lake Erie. Brandon Yip out 4-6 weeks

Avalanche Trade Rumors:

Wolski on the block? Said TSN's Bob McKenzie:

If Wolski were to be traded to Phoenix, Mueller and something else would obviously be involved. Phoenix has been shopping Mueller. Hard.

 

Wolski is by no means fire sale and not guaranteed to be moved but if u look at long-range salary implications, Avs are exploring options.

Dater on Wolski:

Bruins asked about Wolski, but Avs would want first-round pick for him. Unlikely

Dater on Svatos:

Svatos to Phoenix is a possibility.

Other news/trades/signings of interest to MHH from around the league:

Another former Avalanche defensman is on the move: Derek Morris is set to return to Phoenix. The former first round pick is being traded for a 4th round pick. How the mighty have fallen....(in all fairness, he was never that mighty). 

The Penguins send Former AV Martin Skoula (traded as excess) along with prospect Luca Caputi to Toronto to join former AV Jeff "the" Finger in the press box, all for the Leaf's Alexi Ponikarovsky. Skoula then was moved by Toronto to New Jersey for a 5th round pick.

Former AV Jordan Leoprone Leopold has been traded by Florida to Pittsburgh for a 2nd round pick.

The KHL says they will try to lure Ilya Kovalchuk to the KHL this June when his NHL contract expires. Just imagine their sales pitch: "Hey Kovi, come play with us! It's cold as shit and you can be linemates with Trailor Arnason!" Or maybe, "Russia: at least it isn't New Jersey".

Yan Stastny will be joining his brother in the NW Division. Stastny has been traded to the Vancouver Canucks for Cedric Labrie.

Avs rumored to be on the trading block:

Wojtek Wolski UPDATE:  traded to Phoenix
John-Michael Liles
Brett Clark
Ruslan Salei
Marek Svatos

Other notables:

Tom Preissing
Darcy Tucker
Brian Willsie
Peter Budaj
T.J. Hensick
David Koci

And when the dust settles on all of this, we'll have a pregame thread up late this afternoon.

More photos » David Zalubowski - AP

The guy on the left may be in line for a large raise this summer.

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With the trade deadline looming, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at where the Avs are sitting contract-wise for next season. While the prevailing wisdom seems to be that the Avalanche won't be very active at the March 3rd trade deadline, Avalanche GM Greg Sherman has some interesting decisions ahead of him this summer, and those could have an impact next week. As always, I'm using cap numbers from both NHL Numbers and CapGeek.

Up front, the Avalanche have 9 players locked in for next season (I'm only including guys who've been on the roster this year). Although Ryan Stoa and Justin Mercier may very well be on next year's team, it's a little premature to count on them just yet. The other 7 forwards should all feature prominently in the team's plans for next season. The total cap hit for those 7 is $16,424,000. (CapGeek lists Duchene's cap hit as 3.2 million, NHL Numbers has him at 3.4 million. I went with the former).

Probably the most interesting story in all of this is what happens with some key restricted free agents. With not-very-sincere apologies to T.J. Hensick, the Avalanche have 3 key RFAs this summer (cap number below is their required qualifying offer)

When looking at what kind of a contract Wolski might demand, it's hard not to look at the deal Phil Kessel signed last summer with the Maple Leafs. The previous season, Kessel scored 36 goals and 60 points. Wolski is on pace to score 23 / 63. To that point in his career, Kessel had average .57 points per game. Wolski is currently at .64. Now, Kessel was younger than Wolski and had more career goals, so I don't expect the World of Wolski to quite match Kessel's 5-year, $5.4 million deal. But I can see an argument that he should be in the $4 - $4.5 million range.

Wolski is not on the open market yet, however. In order to retain his rights, the Avalanche need to tender Wolski a qualifying offer of at least $2.8 million per year by July 1st. Wolski does not have to sign this deal, and other teams are able to sign Wolski to an offer sheet. The Avalanche would be able to match this deal. If they don't, they would be get a boatload of draft picks in return. If Wolski gets between $3 and $4 million from another team, the Avalanche would get a 1st, 2nd and 3rd round pick to give up his rights. If he end up in the $4 to $5 million range, it's 2 1sts, a 2nd and a 3rd - similar to what Boston got for Kessel. Anything over $5 million, and the Avalanche could receive 4 1st round picks as compensation. Is there an NHL GM willing to give up 4 1st round picks to land Wolski? Doubtful. Might a team give up 2 1sts, a 2nd and a 3rd to land him? That's starting to creep a little more into the realm of plausibility.

Wolski may also elect to go to arbitration if he is unhappy with the qualifying offer the Avalanche make to him. Last summer, Nikolai Zherdev, coming off a 58-point season with the Rangers, was awarded $3.9 million by an arbitrator (the Rangers subsequently walked away from the deal, making Zherdev an unrestricted free agent).

With all the variables, it's hard to predict exactly what will happen with Wolski's contract this summer, but don't be shocked if his cap number is at or above the $4 million range. I'm a fan of Double Dub, but I'm curious to see if the Avalanche are confident enough in Wolski to allocate that much cap room to him.

Chris Stewart? Wolski signed his $2.8 million deal in 2008, his first year of restricted free agency. At the time, Wolski had 42 career goals, had a career point per game rate of .64 and his best season was 50 points. Stewart currently has 30 goals, .55 PPG and is on pace to score 55+ points. He also would seem to be a prime poaching candidate - better than Wolski even - due to his combination of size, speed and skill. I'm sure Stewart isn't going anywhere, but the Avalanche will consider themselves lucky if they are paying Stewart anything less than $3 million next year.

Brandon Yip is tougher to gauge. He's had a great year, but it's only one year and not a full one at that. I'm not really sure what fair market value for Yip might be. Cody McLeod signed for a shade over $1 million after his 49-game debut season. For now, let's put Yip in the $1.2-$1.5 million range. That puts the estimated total salary for the three key RFAs at forward at $8,500,000 or so. 

Finally, here's a list of the Avs' unrestricted free agents at forwards. Even if Darcy Tucker and Marek Svatos don't get moved at the deadline, their combined $4.4 million in cap space will certainly be off the books next year (essentially that money would go to the raises due to the 3 RFAs above). A couple of these guys - Durno and Hendricks, for example - could return next year, but no one on this list is going to signed for much more than the minimum.

So, combining the 7 from the first list and the 3 from the 2nd list and the Avalanche would project to have 10 players locked up next year for $24,924,000 - call it $25 million. That would be Stastny, Duchene and O'Reilly up the middle, Wolski, Galiardi and McLeod on the left wing and Hejduk, Stewart, Jones and Yip on the right side - an excellent nucleus. Truthfully, the Avalanche may be heavy on the right side, but I can't really see the Avalanche moving any of those 4 right wingers. With that core group in place, it's hard to picture Svatos, Tucker or Hensick figuring into any of the Avs' future plans. All three players should be considered "in play" at the deadline.

Oh, and 9 of those 10 forwards are under 26 years old. The future is bright...as long as the salary cap doesn't derail the team before they become the next NHL dynasty.

(I'll look at the defense and goaltending a little later on)

SportsDalaiLama broke down the Avs' tough remaining schedule yesterday over at Real Denver Sports. In a follow-up to that, I thought I'd take a look at the way the Avalanche are shaping up in terms of tiebreakers; it seems like a real possibility that the Avalanche end up tied with someone in the tightly-wound Western Conference.

For reference, here's the way the NHL decides tiebreakers:

• The fewer number of games played (i.e., superior points percentage).
• The greater number of games won.
• The greater number of points earned in games between the tied clubs. If two clubs are tied, and have not played an equal number of home games against each other, points earned in the first game played in the city that had the extra game shall not be included. If more than two clubs are tied, the higher percentage of available points earned in games among those clubs, and not including any "odd" games, shall be used to determine the standing.
• The greater differential between goals for and against for the entire regular season.

We can ignore the first one, as everyone will have played 82 games by the end of the season (the only point this really counts). And I'm not going to bother with the "more than two clubs" scenario either. I'm going to skip San Jose, Chicago, Columbus and Edmonton - all teams either far ahead or behind the Avalanche in the standings.

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One of the big personal pet peeves of mine is the lack of salary information from the league. Third party sites like NHLSCAP.com, CapGeek.com and NHLNumbers.com do a good job with the contract aspect of things, but don't handle waiver status. If there exists a league resource for waiver eligibility (official or otherwise), I haven't been able to find it.

That's head-scratching to me. If you need evidence as to the importance of the waiver system, you need look no farther than Kyle Quincey who would be with the Red Wings today if he hadn't been waiver eligible when the Wings needed to demote him last fall. This is information that we need to know.

So, I dove into the NHL's giant CBA pdf and poured over the NHLSCAP FAQ on the subject and I feel I've got a decent handle on waivers. I'm not really going to go into the gory details of the "why" of waivers, other than to say that for the first few years (usually 3) of a player's career or for his first x number of games (anywhere from 60 to 160), a player can be moved between the NHL and AHL freely (assuming he's old enough to play in the AHL, of course, which is another show). The length of time / number of games a player is exempt is based on the age of a player when he is signed (it has nothing to do with whether he has a 1-way contract). Once that period of exemption is over, a player needs to clear waivers before being demoted (or recalled, if he hasn't cleared waivers that season). This ends the the overly-simplistic overview, although there are other nuances (we're not going to touch re-entry waivers, for example). Let's get to the point of this post: the "who".

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Game three of the series between the 'Nucks and the 'Hawks tonight, followed by a late showing of the Douchecapades out in Orange County, California.

Comment early, comment often.

FLASH: There may be the rarest of all European fowl sitings in the Windy City tonight: the rare Ossi Vaananan will be dressed for Vancouver!

Mrs. @ MHH woke me up to post this.  I hope the loyal MHH members make good use of it.  Here's the obligitory picture of Ovechkin Luongo.  Enjoy.

I don't know where I land on this one.  I'd like to see the kids in Chicago dominate and move on to the Conference Finals, but I don't think they'd have much of a chance against Detroit or Anahiem.  Then again, at some point the 'Nucks decend into "Depend on Luongo" mode when secondary scoring dries up, so they might not be much of a threat either.

Oh well, coin flip.........The 'Stache vs. Ze Twinz.  Game 1, let's do this.

via www.thehockeynews.com

He's the last man standing.  Brampton Battalion's (OHL) Matt Duchene (pictured) recorded a hat trick that helped to propel his team to the Ontario Hockey League Finals against the Windsor Spitfires.  Duchene has been a known commodity to scouts and draft followers, but a recent report from a scouting service has caused casual observers to take notice.

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