Leave it to a wife to best put in perspective the anxieties of a spouse.
Kelly Sopel says that the time leading up to the NHL's trade deadline is worse than the trade itself.
"Because you don't know what's going on," said Sopel, whose husband Brent has been traded twice in his career around the deadline, including on Feb. 24 when Atlanta sent him to Montreal. "They get edgy. They get miserable with all the rumors. They're wondering if they're going to stay, wondering if they're going to go. Once it happens, it's 'OK, I can breathe. Get on to next city.'"
For fans, trade deadline day can be one of the most exciting all season, as they wait, almost as if on Christmas morning, to see what presents their team will receive. Canada's all-sports network, TSN, devotes 10 hours of live coverage to the day's events.
However, for players and their families, it's not quite the voyeuristic experience it is for fans. It can be disorienting as the newly traded player adjusts to a new city, a new coach, new teammates, a new environment and, in some circumstances, they are uprooted from their family, having to spend months apart -- a loneliness for which all the money in the world cannot compensate them. Now, three days after the deadline, many players are adjusting to their new surroundings.
Players understand that it's part of the business -- their salaries are such that, in most cases, they would have a hard time being able to match outside the NHL -- but the days and weeks leading up to the deadline are nonetheless fraught with uncertainty.
Proof of that misery and edginess that Kelly Sopel spoke of could be found less than 72 hours from the expiration of the deadline when Florida Panthers goalie Tomas Vokoun had stopped 45 of 46 shots to defeat the Atlanta Thrashers 2-1 and keep his team in playoff contention. The circumstances rendered the victory joyless for Vokoun.
The deadline loomed. Promising young player Michael Frolik was traded on Feb. 9. One veteran teammate, Cory Stillman, had been traded the day before. Another, Bryan McCabe, would be dealt the next day. On the deadline day itself on Monday, two other veterans -- Bryan Allen and fellow Czech countryman Radek Dvorak -- also would get moved.
"It's been tough the last little while," Vokoun said after the win. "Obviously, it's not easy to deal with what's going on with our team."
Atlanta Thrashers coach Craig Ramsay was fortunate to play his entire career with one team, the Buffalo Sabres. But he still went through those emotions and watched his friends and teammates deal with them.
"It was definitely nerve-wracking," Ramsay said. "They used to call somebody off the ice and say,
