MVN - Most Valuable Network

Olli Jokinen traded to Phoenix

It didn’t take long for the Peter DeBoer era to get underway. Not even a week into his tenure as Panthers’ head coach, he has waved goodbye to captain Olli Jokinen. It was announced on Friday that the long time Cat has become a Dog (a Coyote to be exact). Coming east in return will be Keith Ballard, Nick Boynton and a second round pick (49th overall) in this year’s draft.

Translation: Our franchise player and top scoring forward for a guy that was on waivers during the season, a serviceable defender and a second round pick still leaving us without a first round pick. This is Roberto Luongo all over again.

There is one small glimmer of hope. The Panthers are now overrun with defenders. Counting Magnus Johanson, Jassen Cullimore and Branislav Mezei who are awaiting offers, there are ten. All we can do right now is hope against hope that another move has already been mapped out. However, even if there has been, it is imperative to get optimal trade value for a star player like Jokinen. Clearly, the Panthers did not.

Defense wins championships — unless you can’t score at all. If the season started today, the Panthers would once again become the league punching bag.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find my pants.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 20th, 2008 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Trades & Transactions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.