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Another trade deadline has come and gone, with yesterday’s 3 p.m. bell sounding like a fire alarm. A flurry of activity, the most the league has seen in five years, capped off a day that saw some fanbases begin to dream those sweet Stanley Cup dreams, while others, either content with what they had or willing to call it a lost season, viewed from the cheap seats.
Team president and general manager Lou Lamoriello, who began his Islanders tenure by adding Leo Komarov, Matt Martin and Tom Kuhnhackl, shocked almost everyone by going out and acquiring, arguably, the top trade chip on the board. Just last week, he plugged a huge hole created by the season-ending injury to Adam Pelech by grabbing 37-year old Andy Greene from New Jersey for a second-round draft pick.
Yesterday, the splash was a little bigger. He sent his 2020 first-round pick (which becomes 2021 if the Islanders choose in the top three), a 2020 second-round pick and a 2022 third-round pick (only if Islanders win the Stanley Cup in 2020) for Jean-Gabriel Pageau, a 27-year-old center who ticks a lot of the boxes for head coach Barry Trotz.
Pageau does just about everything well. He’s a model gentleman and teammate by all accounts. He kills penalties, wins faceoffs, plays tough minutes and is a proven playoff performer (12-4-16 in 35 games). This season, he has already set career highs in goals (24) and ice time (19:18) and will surely pass his mark for points (needs three more). It is, however, only the second time in his eight-year career he has surpassed 14 goals, so expecting major offense from him is a stretch.
Jean-Yves Ahern-USA TODAY Sports "We felt that with our lineup to solidify down the middle, we needed a center iceman, and they are very few and far between," Lamoriello said on a media conference call. "When you're looking at a center, you try and get a complete player that can play in all situations, and certainly this young man fit the bill."
With the cloud of his unrestricted free agency status hanging over the deal, Lamoriello proceeded to then sign Pageau to a six-year contract extension with a $5 million annual salary cap hit. The money, for a player of Pageau’s skill set, based on comparables, seems about right. You can argue that the term of six-years for a third-line player is excessive, but at least, the full no-trade clause (which every player seems to get now) is only for the first two years of the deal. It then becomes a more modified clause (16-team player submitted list).
Lamoriello then turned his attention towards another deal, trying to shed himself of Andrew Ladd’s contract by taking on a worse one, that of Minnesota’s Zach Parise. Parise, who scored 28-goals last season and is already at 21 this year, is 35-years-old and still has a whopping five years remaining north of $7 million AAV. However, he and Bill Guerin, Wild general manager, could not make the money work, as I’m sure Lamoriello wanted his counterpart to absorb some of that awful cap hit.
Pageau still has some paperwork obstacles to overcome in order to play tonight against the rival New York Rangers in what has turned out to be a bigger game than expected two months ago, with the Rangers surging in the standings and looking to sneak into the playoffs. But he’s certainly saying all the right things early in his Islanders career.
"Obviously they were a hard team to play against, and now just to be a part of that team, it's something that I'm excited about," Pageau said to the media via conference call. "I haven't really had the chance to look at where I would fit, but the only thing I can say is I can't guarantee I'm going to score goals or anything, but there's one thing - I'm going to bring 110 percent every day to try to do my best. That's all I can control. I'm going to take the role that they give me. I'm going to take it seriously. My heart's going to go right now and I'm going to give it my all."
I can give you this piece of advice, JG, as you make your way to meet your teammates this morning. That’s all this fanbase has ever asked. Give it your all. Give 110% and they will love you forever. Based on what your old organization and ex-teammates had to say about your character, I have a feeling you’ll do just fine here.