Ducks' locker room regroups with trade deadline now in rearview
Maybe it's the 24-hour news cycle or maybe it's just the overall growth in popularity of hockey, but the NHL trade deadline has morphed into a much bigger monster than it once resembled.
The first question always asked is "Where were you when you were traded?" It's like that old Dane Cook car-crash bit: "I was in my kitchen washing a dish."
Simon Despres was shopping for furniture in Pittsburgh with his girlfriend when he got the call. But the defenseman he was traded for, Ben Lovejoy, was still on the ice when the trade was completed, making for an unfortunate turn of events when he came off.
You could blame it on the time difference. A few east-coast reporters and the Pittsburgh Penguins confirmed the trade on their Twitter accounts while the Ducks were still practicing at Gila River Arena in Arizona. But the trade hadn't officially been approved by the league, thus there was no reason to pull him off the ice.
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As he headed back to the dressing room, one of the Ducks' most valued glue guys pulled out his phone and saw 16 text messages that broke the news: He was headed back to Pittsburgh to play for his former team.
Lovejoy, his teammates and general manager Bob Murray were understandably upset.
"The way that Ben Lovejoy found out that he was traded was wrong," Murray said. "The way that he got off the ice and found out on Twitter, he knew before the deal was even done. That is wrong in our business today. And it's amazing to me, I'd done deals with Montreal, Florida and Columbus today ahead of that deal and nobody ever knew a thing.
"That's the way it's supposed to happen, a player is supposed to find out he's traded from the general manager because I owe it to the player to make that phone call and I wasn't afforded that today."
It's a day that puts players on edge from the minute they wake up. The tension builds as players walk into the dressing room and then finally see guys get pulled off the ice and their stalls cleaned out before they're even off.
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Murray made four moves at Monday's non-waiver trade deadline, and a total of six were made the week before it passed. It's a day to expect the unexpected, but there was a lot more action on this deadline day than most have come to anticipate.
"It was tough. We saw (Eric Brewer) and (Rene Bourque) pulled off and at that point you kind of expect it," said Ducks' winger Kyle Palmieri. "We kind of kept practicing and then came back off the ice. I came off the ice after Lovie and you could see that he was a little shaken up. We got right back on the bus and a couple of guys filled us in on what happened.
"It's tough to find out like that."
While it might be a seamless transition on the ice, it's never seamless off it.
Tomas Fleischmann, who was traded to the Ducks on Saturday, said it's best to focus on yourself as a player first and then figure out the details --permanent housing, moving the family to the new location -- later.
"You try and get to your new team as soon as you can," he said. "You leave your family behind and figure it out later. They might come see me later. Other than that, just making sure I have good preparation for the game."
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All understand that it's just business. Sometimes, it's good business.
"For some guys it works out great and they get fresh starts and get to go places where the teams want them and may want them in a different role," Palmeri said. "Those fresh starts are big for people."
But sometimes, it's poor business.
There's a lot of blame to go around about how the situation with Lovejoy, an all-around great guy and great hockey player, was handled. But with the way news is broken on social media right now, he's probably not the last guy it will happen to.
"I hope you write that, because I'm very pissed off that Ben had to find the way he did," Murray said. "He was a good soldier for us. That was not fair."
