FanHouse KeithTkachuk

Around 10 AM ET Friday morning, the Florida Panthers announced on their twitter feed that some breaking news was set to be announced within the hour. The first thought, of course, was centered around the possibility of the team trading defenseman Jay Bouwmeester's rights to a club that intended to sign him. Or, perhaps, that a general manager had been named.

Two hours later, TSN's Darren Dreger announced, via his own twitter feed (naturally), that Florida and Phoenix had made a trade. The deal? Steven Reinprecht to Florida in return for Stefan Meyer. Considering the initial build up, it was kind of a letdown.

On February 20, the St. Louis Blues were an afterthought in the Western Conference playoff race. They sat in 15th place out of 15 teams in the conference, five points behind eighth-place Edmonton. It appeared to be just another non-playoff year for the Blues, who hadn't been to the postseason since before the lockout.

What has happened to St. Louis since then is nothing short of incredible. They went on a 16-5-3 tear to end the regular season, and the Blues climbed nine spots in the Western Conference, finishing in sixth place.

Exactly 1,230 regular season games have been played. We're down to the best eight teams in each conference. The Stanley Cup Playoffs begin Wednesday night with four series lid-lifters.

The Western Conference is home to the league's best team (San Jose), the defending champion (Detroit), and the two most intriguing Cinderella stories in the league (St. Louis and Columbus). Can Cinderella put off the stroke of midnight, or will an established power advance their way to the Finals?

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 Clash once posed the question: Should I stay or should I go now? We take a look at the big names surrounding the NHL trade deadline and whether they'll be staying in place or going to finish the season in another city.

Two years ago, the St. Louis Blues traded Keith Tkachuk at the trade deadline to the Atlanta Thrashers. In an odd twist, he was traded back to St. Louis that June. This year, with the Blues falling off the playoff pace in the Western Conference, they could easily be sellers at the deadline. Right now the team is only five points out of the eighth spot, but would have to leapfrog four other teams to get there. If they do decide to sell off assets, the most likely candidate is the 36-year old Tkachuk.

It's great to see quality NHL action return to Chicago after years of disappointing hockey, and man, what a team the windy city has. With their 4-1 win in Minnesota on Sunday, the Blackhawks picked up their ninth straight victory, improving their record to 20-6-7, good enough for the fifth best record in the league.

Chicago received a four-point performance from Dustin Byfuglien, who scored a pair of goals in the first period and also added a pair of assists later in the game, as the Blackhawks dominated Minnesota. Cristobal Huet faced only 19 shots, turning away 18 of them to pick up his fifth consecutive win in goal. During his personal winning streak, Huet has allowed only four goals, posting a .967 save percentage.

Cal Clutterbuck scored Minnesota's only goal, while Martin Havlat and Kris Versteeg added tallies for the Blackhawks.

While Chicago has been reeling off win after win, the Wild have been going the opposite direction winning just two of their past 10 games.

It's been a rough season for the St. Louis Blues, a young team that's been decimated by injuries --ranging from the ridiculous, to the absurd -- so you'll have to excuse head coach Andy Murray if he's just a tad bit annoyed following 6-3 losses at home.

After Blake Wheeler and the Bruins completed their goal-scoring assault on Sunday, the St. Louis bench boss decided to go down the roster -- at least that's the way it seemed -- and point out the players who didn't exactly put on a strong showing against the top team in the Eastern Conference. Some guys played so poorly -- in his eyes -- that he mentioned them twice. And poor David Perron, I think that may have been the worst call-out of the bunch.

Jeremy Rutherford from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the post-game carnage:

"I didn't think (Patrik) Berglund was good, I didn't think (David) Perron was good, I didn't think (Keith) Tkachuk was good ... I didn't think (Brad) Boyes was good," Murray said. "I thought (David) Backes was all right." "I expect Jeff Woywitka to be a lot better than he was today," he continued. "David Perron ... where's he? Berglund, I expect him to be better. Am I being a little hard on them here? That's just the way that it is."

Florida Panthers goaltender Craig Anderson turned aside all 37 shots he faced, while Henrik Lundqvist failed to make it beyond the second period for the Rangers, as the Panthers used a three-goal outburst in the second to roll to a 4-0 win.

The Panthers received goals from Ville Peltonen, Stephen Weiss and Gregory Campbell in the second, as Weiss and Campbell scored just 12 seconds apart, leading to Rangers coach Tom Renney lifting his all-star netminder. Michael Frolik added some insurance in the third period for Florida, picking up his second goal of the season.

For Anderson, it's the fourth time this season he's stopped at least 37 shots in a game, as he pushes his season record to 4-1-3 and currently boasts a .948 save percentage, best in the NHL. He had to withstand a 17-shot barrage from the Rangers in the final period to preserve the shutout.

Anderson's performance was good enough for him to earn yet another start on Tuesday, when the Panthers take on Washington.

When the Atlanta Thrashers mortgaged a great deal of their future to acquire power forward Keith Tkachuk and his pasty white thighs, it was pretty much assumed that the deal was done simply to just make the playoffs and save GM Don Waddell's job.

Well, The Don's comments to the Atlanta Journal Constitution this morning certainly indicate that the deal was simply a rental all along.

Don Waddell confirmed what I suspected today, saying that the Thrashers won't be offering forward Keith Tkachuk a contract before the July 1st deadline.

After that the Thrashers lose exclusive negotiating rights to the big center who will be an unrestricted free agent. Even with that confirmation, Waddell said that he thought Tkachuk was a good fit in Atlanta and wasn't against doing some negotiating after July 1st.

In a previous entry, it was noted that the Thrashers made a very risky bet that didn't pay off, and shouldn't have been expected to.

For all of the assets the Thrashers dealt, they got FOUR total playoff games and 18 regular season games out of Keith Tkachuk. Yeesh!!!

So, should the Thrashers simply let Tkachuk go without so much as an offer or a 'Thank You' fruit basket?

Well, Tkachuk made $3.8mil last season and had 58 points in 79 games, which is somewhat pricey, but reasonable. He is 35, however, not known for being in great shape, and will only get slower as time goes on.

From a distance, it would appear smart not to offer Tkachuk a whole lot of money and watch him turn into a washed-up John LeClair clone.

Yes, the Thrashers paid a whole lot and got little in return, but no need to justify the investment with another expensive investment in a further contract offer, which come do even more damage to the Thrashers' franchise. Let some other team overpay Tkachuk and then have to deal him at the trading deadline.
(Photo Credit: Getty Images)

Just as Nashville did with their trade for Peter Forsberg, the Atlanta Thrashers spent big on a 'warrior', hoping to make their first playoff foray a successful one.

The risky bet? Glen Metropolit, a first and third-round draft pick in 2007 and a second-round draft pick in 2008 for Keith Tkachuk.

Tkachuk, 35, doesn't have nearly the same sparking playoff track record that Forsberg does, but the Thrashers wanted a big power forward that could score some goals, and GM Don Waddell, in an act of desperation, rolled the dice.

The results?
Regular Season: 18GP 7-8-15PTS
Playoffs: 4GP 1-2-3PTS
SWEPT in the first round by the New York Rangers.

The one positive to the trade was that the Thrashers made the playoffs in the first place. This may not have happened with Tkachuk around to provide some offense.

Tkachuk, himself, played fairly well for the Thrashers, and was not to blame for their early exit. If some of the other Thrashers *cough* Kovalchuk *cough* played with as much heart and passion as Tkachuk did, they likely wouldn't have been swept so easily.

Still, this is the prime example of short-term thinking by an NHL GM.

Don Waddell was so heavily bent on just making the playoffs that he was willing to deal away a lot of future assets just to make the show.

Did he give any regard to the fact that his rosters had more holes than Howard K. Stern's paternity defense? No. Waddell simply threw his chips in the middle of the table with little regard to how he would hamper his franchise later, when a different GM is likely to feel the effects his actions.

The Thrashers will be hard-pressed to fill the holes on their roster with even less assets to deal. The Thrashers picked the wrong time to roll the dice, and it cost them.