2012 NHL Trade Deadline: The Dust Is Long From Settled

And what was the point of throwing Nash under the bus today? That’s clearly going to motivate the team to finish the season strong.

Plus, talk about over-valuing a player.

Columbus GM Scott Howson rejected what is believed a Rangers’ final offer of Dubinsky, 21-year-old defenseman Tim Erixon, 2011 first-rounder J.T. Miller, 2010 second-rounder Christian Thomas and a first-round selection in this June’s Entry Draft.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/rangers/rangers_don_trade_for_nash_stand_jAPkLXtsG4UrJTPv9MxcVN#ixzz1nd21sYC6

Good luck for the next 5 years. I really hope they don’t ruin Johansen’s development like they have most of their other prospects.

Rangers can now in the offseason go after UFAs Kostinsyn, Parise, Grabovski without surrendering ANY players or draft choices. Betcha Rangers get one of them!

Well, the disfunction that is the Columbus Blue Jackets has reached an all-time high. I always wondered if Nash was a good captain. I’m thinking now that he has not been a good captain. He’s a heckuva player, but Captain on a hockey team is a different thing. Nash is being revealed to be just another selfish millionaire athlete.
Howson has so obviously not delivered. It’s especially evident now that his “reshaping” of the roster ends of being more of the same old indecision disguised as resolution instead of patience. But it’s the same thing: risk averse.
The net result of the deals made by the deadline are about what you would expect of a seller: dump underachieving salary, dump UFA’s you won’t re-sign, and promise “jam tomorrow.” That is, we’ll fix it in the off-season.
And now ownership had better take a good look at the mess they have on their hands. Think they’ll sell 7,000 season tickets next year?

Just when I was starting to possibly not hate Scott Howson, he has to go and do something so inexplicably stupid that it seriously makes me wonder how he’s still here. Does he really need more attention placed on him and his failures by making all this public? Throwing Nash under the bus like that was completely uncalled for. Even if Nash DID come forward with that ultimatum (in which case I would choose “Nash” every single time…at least he doesn’t need an “advisor” to play the game for him), it was never a public matter, and it’s up to Howson to be the bigger man in his role as GM.

Has Nash been a great captain? I’m not one to say…I was never in the locker room. If he wasn’t a good captain, then they should have stripped the “C” from his chest a long time ago. But let’s face it, he at least put on a class act for longer than most people in his situation would have, and I think he was at least owed a dignified exit, regardless of how selfish he was perceived to be.

I think everyone’s right: the relationship between Nash and Howson will definitely end this summer. I can only hope against all odds that it’s Howson that’s the one leaving.

I’m gonna play pro-GMSH…not my real position, I’m somewhere in between.

I don’t think SH wanted to trade Nash, but when Nash asked him too, he had to at least try. If Nash asks for a trade, I would expect him to have a list a little longer then the rumored 5 clubs. That already puts SH behind the 8-ball, because the 2 or 3 clubs that actually want to try for hom know they don’t have competition and then Nash’s agent tells the media that they won’t lengthin their list putting SH farther behind the ball. At this point, he has no leverage, no change he can tell the Rangers who he wants.

Howson may have made mistakes along the way as a GM, but I strongly disagree with those saying that the Nash trade debacle is Howson’s fault.

So here is what I have deduced from today’s trade deadline and Scott Howson’s already infamous press conference. Apparently Rick Nash asked to be traded in January and gave Howson a list of a very select few teams that he would accept. He also told Howson not to say that he was in fact the one asking for a trade (my interpretation), and persisted in saying "no comment" to the Media when the subject came up. He then put pressure on the Jackets, via his agent, by claiming that his list would not change at a later date if he was not traded by the deadline. The select list combined with the fact that several of these teams may have had cap issues or other more pressing needs, as well as the high asking price, led to very few teams competing for Nash. Howson did apparently receive a few offers late in the day, but from what I have heard nothing spectacular was ever on the table.

At a later news conference Howson explains the situation, including the fact that Nash was the one asking for a deal and that his list severely limited the offers. So why would he do that? Is he just throwing Nash under the bus because he is upset with Nash? Well, there could be another reason. Howson wants maximum return for his biggest asset and he will never get that if only a few teams are in play. By "outing" Nash he has now put pressure on Nash to expand the list so that more teams can be in play after the season. As a CBJ fan, I can only conclude that this was a smart move. Why should the Jackets give up the one and only chance to get great value for Nash, just because he wants to leave now. I can fully understand why he wants to go to another team, but I don’t want the organization to give him up for anything but a very high prize.

I also understand completely why people are upset with the situation. With all the build up and hype before the trade deadline, we were all hoping that a wonderful deal would materialize and that Nash could leave on good terms. However, as a Jackets fan it is my opinion that the needs of the team and the organization should always come before those of an individual player – even a great player like Nash. I have always maintained that Nash is a class act and a great ambassador for hockey and Columbus, and I still believe that to be true. However, it appears that he tried to paint the organization into a corner, and gambled that a deal could be reached before the trade deadline. Well, Nash gambled and lost this time. Faced with a lose-lose scenario, Howson didn’t let Nash dictate the terms of his departure and took back the initiative by putting pressure on Nash to be more reasonable. Good for him and good for the organization.

Mr. Nash, I will always be thankful for your (previous) commitment to Columbus and for what you have accomplished on the ice. But for the first time ever, I can’t say that I will be sorry to see you leave. Thanks for the memories and good luck. But before you go, I hope you do the right thing and expand your list of teams so that we can at least have the best possible chance to rebuild our team.

Fire Howson. Bring in a real GM (Craig Patrick, white courtesy phone.). Trade Nash. Get rid of Mase. Let all the UFAs go and pack the roster with kids. Will we have an up and down season, next year? Sure, but they’ll probably be fun to watch.

Regardless of what you think of Nash’s actions, the fact is that Scott Howson has completely bungled his handling of this. What exactly throwing Nash under the bus like he did today supposed to accomplish?

Supposedly this will force Nash to expand his list of trade destinations…how is that supposed to work exactly? Nash’s camp, obviously not very pleased by getting sucker-punched this way, have already come out and said the list won’t change.

Meanwhile, now every other team in the NHL knows that Nash wants out. If Howson couldn’t get a satisfactory deal done now, how is he going to get a better one in the off-season when every potential trading partner is aware Columbus is bargaining from a weaker position?

But hey, this is actually a pretty shrewd move by Howson if you consider it from the perspective that it divides the fanbase. Now that the team’s ever-shrinking cadre of fans are busy arguing about Nash and whether it was right for him to ask for a trade, whether he’s a good captain, etc. etc, attention will be diverted from the concrete facts of what Howson has (and hasn’t) actually accomplished as GM:

Setting the whole Nash business aside, this is another trade deadline where we’ve shuffled around 3rd- and 4th-line guys, got nothing that directly addresses one of the team’s many obvious needs, and picked up a few extra prospects and/or draft picks which are supposed to string us fans along even though the current regime has given us absolutely no reason to have any confidence about their ability to draft well or develop prospects.

I have grown up with this team, been following them for a dozen years now, and there have been lots of times along the way where I thought I had reached the point of despair, but this is lower than them all. Actually, this is more than despair, this is turning into outright apathy. I have already taken down the Rob Arra photo of the first face-off in the inaugural game, and I don’t wear my Jackets regalia out in public anymore.