Bottoms Up is a weekly feature on Backhand Shelf that admits that sometimes the underdog doesn’t win: sometimes they just lose and lose and lose some more. In this edition, the losers are going to lose a few players.
We are just over a week away from the NHL trade deadline, which you already know because the hockey media won’t shut up about it. Don’t get me wrong, I like trades and the trade deadline itself can be exciting. What I don’t like is the constant rumour-mongering leading up to the deadline. The vast majority of trade rumours not only never come to fruition, but were also bollocks to begin with.
Eric Duhatschek drove the point home in a recent article, pointing out the massive amount of work that trade rumours create despite their absurdity. Harrison Mooney produced a step-by-step “How To” guide to creating your own trade rumours to show how truly easy it is to fabricate them.
The immediacy of social media has made trade rumours even more infectious, as blogs and media place far too much importance on being the first to report rumours and trades and far less importance on ensuring that those rumours and trades are factual.
With that said, it’s still worth looking at what might happen at the deadline, particularly for the teams wallowing in the league’s basement. While everyone else is wrapped up in Rick Nash and Jeff Carter speculation, I want to look just at the pending unrestricted free agents.
