FanHouse JoshHarding

It's officially the offseason, meaning the time is right to look into the future. We begin our division-by-division preview of the potential wheeling and dealing with the Northeast Division.

Brian Burke begins his rebuild of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Dany Heatley wants out of Ottawa and just what is Boston going to do with Phil Kessel and a limited amount of salary cap space?

Weeks of rumors, innuendo, and e5s will finally come to a head on Wednesday. At 3pm Eastern, the NHL trade deadline will pass. You can follow all the activity with our NHL Trade Deadline Tracker.

Entering play Tuesday night, 23 NHL teams are either in a playoff position or within six points of one. While this is great for the playoff races, it's not so good for the deadline. It minimizes the number of potential sellers, drives up the trade market for the few players who should be available, and leaves us wondering if any big deals will go down. Here's a look at how the Western Conference looks heading into the deadline.

The Minnesota Wild are in the midst of a six-game road trip. The trip is part of a stretch of 14 out of 17 games on the road, as the XCel Energy Center is being used for Minnesota state boys and girls high school hockey tournaments, the state high school wrestling tournament, and a college hockey tournament.

As the trip continues Tuesday night in Vancouver, the Wild find themselves 0-2, and now in 10th place in the Western Conference. Even with veteran forward Owen Nolan flying to Vancouver Monday so he can play despite a broken toe, the Wild are in search of some good news. They finally have some.

Okay, so maybe the title is a bit of an overreaction. Still, that doesn't change the fact the New York Islanders are a terrible, terrible third period hockey team, and they proved it once again on Tuesday, giving up four goals in the final 20 minutes on their way to a 5-4 loss to the Rangers.

The Islanders actually entered the third with a 2-1 lead, only to watch the Rangers beat Joey MacDonald -- starting in place of Rick Dipietro -- four times on their final 12 shots. Petr Prucha, playing for the first time in eight games, tied the game just 49 seconds into the third period, while Michal Rozsival gave the Rangers their first lead of the night two minutes later. Markus Naslund and Nigel Dawes also tallied late goals for the Rangers, while Scott Gomez tapped in a tic-tac-toe pass from Nikolai Zherdev and Brandon Dubinsky in the second period, opening the scoring for the Rangers.

Mike Sillinger, Kyle Okposo, Blake Comeau and Mike Comrie scored for the Islanders.

Physical game between the crosstown rivals, resulting in a pair of fights in the first 10 minutes, and capped off with a crushing hit by Ryan Callahan on Trent Hunter early in the third. Callahan smashed the Islanders forward into the penalty box door, forcing it open, resulting in Hunter's midsection smashing off the boards. He was down for quite a while, and appeared to be in severe pain, resulting in a stretcher being brought on the ice. Hunter, however, managed to bring himself to his feet and skate off because, you know, he's a hockey player.

It's been a rough stretch for the Minnesota Wild over the past two weeks, and it continued on Sunday as they dropped their fifth in a row -- and sixth in their past seven games -- as they fell to Anaheim, 4-2. During this current losing streak, Minnesota has scored only five goals, and is finding out that it's quite difficult to win every game 1-0.

After overcoming a 2-0 deficit thanks to a pair of goals by Marc-Andre Bergeron and Eric Belanger, the Wild allowed Brendan Morrison and Bobby Ryan to reclaim the lead for the Ducks. From that point on, J.S. Giguere shut the door for Anaheim, as he turned aside 26 shots in the win. The Ducks also received goals from Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf, as they won for the third time in their past four games.

Josh Harding received the start in goal for Minnesota, making 30 saves on 34 shots.

The Minnesota Wild are probably the last team you would expect to be involved in a 6-5 game, but, hark, here we are. Paul Stastny scored a pair of goals and picked up an assist for the Avalanche, as they snapped the Wild's modest two-game winning streak on Monday night.

Minnesota goalie Niklas Backstrom had what was, perhaps, his worst night of the season, giving up six goals on 26 shots through the first two periods. He didn't come back out for the third, as Josh Harding took over and stopped all five shots he faced in the defeat.

For the Avalanche, Peter Budaj gave up five goals of his own on 17 shots, as Minnesota picked up goals from Pierre-Marc Bouchard (2), Owen Nolan, Mikko Koivu, and Brent Burns.

Bouchard scored his second goal of the game just 22 seconds into the second period, giving Minnesota a brief 3-2 lead. Just three minutes later, Stastny picked up his first, as the Avalanche would fill the net three more times in the period, ultimately chasing Backstrom from the game.

Minnesota head coach Jacques Lemaire called the first 40 minutes the worst two periods he had seen, as Colorado was not only leading 6-4, but also holding a commanding 26-12 edge in shots on goal.