Mike Brophy

Veteran hockey columnist Mike Brophy writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Friday on Sportsnet.ca and appears regularly on Hockeycentral.

The NHL's trade deadline means something different to people depending on what role they are playing

As a player, Nick Kypreos loved playing in New York. The city, that is, not the state.

So when rumours started spreading that he might be traded from the Rangers, the team he had helped win the Stanley Cup the season before in 1993-94, to the Buffalo Sabres, Kyper wasn't too pleased.

"It's one of those things where you try not to make eye contact with the coaches or your general manager when you are at the rink and you leave the rink as quickly as you can after practice," Kypreos said. "It's a really, really nervous time when you are a player -- nail-biting time."

The Sabres, it seems, were concerned that their star forward, Pat LaFontaine, was being abused by the opposition and wanted to bring Kypreos in to ride shotgun as his bodyguard. The rumour had Bob Sweeney going back to the Rangers.

Waiting for the deadline to pass, Kypreos said players often take comfort in the fact they aren't alone. There are all kinds of trade rumours leading up to the deadline that players and their families must deal with.

"Players try to make light of it," Kypreos said. "I had guys asking me if I had checked out the real estate in Buffalo. And, I had my fun, too. I'd ask guys if they knew any good restaurants in Buffalo."

The deal never went down and Kypreos remained with the Rangers the rest of that season as well as the following year.

"Years later (Rangers GM Neil Smith) told me the deal actually did get pretty close to getting done," Kypreos said. "That season we knocked off the Quebec Nordiques, who had finished first, and I had a pretty playoff run for the Rangers. I was happy that I wasn't traded."

Nowadays Kypreos is responsible for chasing down rumours and breaking trades. In fact he is one of the biggest news breakers in the game, often getting the scoop on trades and other transactions well ahead of the competition.

"The trade deadline isn't quite what it used to be because of the salary cap," Kypreos said. "You don't see as many blockbuster trades as you used to, but still there will be 15-20 transactions so you have to be on the phone and in touch with your contacts -- the people you rely on to let you know who might be traded and where they might go. I don't think it's as stressful for me now as it was when I was a player. You just try to do the best you can."

Sportsnet analyst Doug MacLean knows all about the pressure of trade deadline. As the president and general manager of the Columbus Blue Jackets, MacLean was right in the thick of things around the trade deadline, but unlike a lot of teams that are looking for that one missing piece of the puzzle to help them win the Stanley Cup, or at least guarantee a long playoff run, MacLean was usually working on a different strategy.

"In Columbus I was typically trying to move money out and add assets," MacLean said. "In 2003-04, for example, I was told by ownership the day before the deadline that I had to move defenceman Darryl Sydor because he was owed $8 million over the next three seasons. I didn't want to trade him, but was forced to. We got Alexander Svitov back in the deal, a kid who was drafted third overall (2001), but hadn't really developed. He never panned out for us, but the trade was pretty good for the Lightning because they won the Stanley Cup and Sydor played well for them."

Like most GMs, MacLean said you work the phones right up until the 3 p.m. deadline.

"I made one deal 10 minutes before the deadline and it was a pretty good one for us," he said. "We traded our captain, Lyle Odelein, to Chicago for Jaroslav Spacek and a second-round pick."

The trades MacLean made often aren't as memorable as the ones that got away.

In 2002-03 MacLean nearly traded little scoring winger Ray Whitney to the Toronto Maple Leafs for a young winger named Alexei Ponikarovsky. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound Russian left winger had yet to establish himself as a bona fide NHLer, but has since turned into a consistent 20-goal scorer. The deal was never consummated and Whitney left the Blue Jackets the following summer as an unrestricted free agent.

Ironically, both Whitney and Ponikarovsky are slated to be UFAs this summer and both could be moved by Wednesday's trade deadline.

Also in 2002-03 he thought he had a deal worked out with Calgary Flames GM Craig Button for speedy centre Rob Niedermayer. MacLean coached Niedermayer in Florida and thought if he were able to get him in Columbus, he might be able to talk Niedermayer's brother, future Hall of Famer Scott Niedermayer, into joining the team when he became a free agent. In the end Button traded Rob Niedermayer to the Anaheim Ducks and when Scott became a free agent, he also signed with Anaheim. The brothers helped the Ducks win the Stanley Cup in 2006-07.

MacLean said there is no comparison to being an NHL GM under pressure to make your team better and being a TV analyst.

"Hey, it's exciting on TV, but the pressure is so much greater when you are a GM," he said. "You do your best to try to figure out trades now, but it's not even close to being in the trenches as a GM. It's pressure, but exciting pressure when you are trying to swing deals."

As for me, the annual trade deadline has changed significantly since I joined Rogers Sportsnet on a full-time basis two years ago. During the previous 17 years when I worked at The Hockey News, we were mostly able to take in the trade deadline day knowing, because we were a weekly magazine, we would analyze the deals for our next publication. There wasn't nearly the urgency to break trades the way there is on TV, although in the latter years with the launch of thehockeynews.com, there was more emphasis on instant analysis.

Like Kypreos and MacLean, I spend a good deal of the season leading up to the trade deadline working my sources to try to get a handle on which teams will be most active and which players are most likely to be moved. As we have seen this season, some of the best action occurred well before the deadline.

The monster deal between the Calgary Flames and Maple Leafs with Dion Phaneuf moving to Toronto is arguably bigger than any deal that went down at last year's deadline. That was followed up by the Leafs getting Jean-Sebastien Giguere out of Anaheim and the New Jersey Devils stepping up to the plate to acquire impending unrestricted free agent sniper Ilya Kovalchuk.

The temptation is to suggest all the big names have now been traded, but you never really know what will motivate a team at the deadline. No doubt we will see plenty more deals between now and 3 p.m. Wednesday.