Canes acquire Weight

The Hurricanes have made a multi-player trade with the hapless St. Louis Blues, the primary piece of the puzzle being Doug Weight. The 35-year old two-time Olympian will hopefully add some more offensive punch.

In addition to Weight, the Hurricanes got 27-year old Finnish prospect Erkki Rajamaki. Rajamaki, a left wing, has never played at the NHL level, and has five goals and four assists in 60 games this season at Worcester of the AHL.

In exchange, the Hurricanes gave up what looks (on paper) to be a lot:

• Jesse Boulerice
  
• Mike Zigomanis
  
• the rights to mystery man Magnus Kahnburg.
  
• Carolina's first round pick in 2006
  
• Toronto's fourth round pick in 2006
  
• Chicago's fourth round pick in 2007

Starting from back to front:
The fourth round draft picks amount to nothing. They're almost always used as trade fodder anyway.
The first round pick kind of concerns me. Not that much, though. Assuming Carolina will make a run deep into the playoffs, their draft pick will be somewhere around 26. It seems like this draft isn't very deep, so the players available at that point aren't so great. For Doug Weight, it might be worth it.

Magnus Kahnburg was drafted by the Canes in 2000, and was never signed. For some reason, even though five drafts have passed since then, the Canes still have the rights to him. He's never shown up to camp, and unless I'm terribly mistaken, I read somewhere that he's recently married and has no intention of moving away from Sweden. Either way, he'll probably never be signed, so he doesn't amount to anything.

Mike Zigomanis is a fun guy to have around, and he puts up mad numbers on NHL 2005, but in real life, he's a career AHLer. He's a good fill-in in emergency situations, but I don't see him ever being an every day player.

Jesse Boulerice is nothing more than (pardon the pun) dead weight. In the old NHL, he had tremendous value because his strongest point is his fighting prowess. However, there isn't a place for that in the new NHL, and the Hurricanes have a couple of otherwise useful players who will drop the gloves when needed. I've written about this a hundred times before, and I'm actually glad to see Boulerice go.

Who knows if Rajamaki will ever make it to the NHL. It would certainly be fun trying to come up with a nickname for him.

Doug Weight, as I've written before, is a guy who brings a lot to the table. He's getting old and his numbers are dropping off, but he's still almost a point-a-night kind of guy. More importantly, though, he's been around the block many times and his veteran leadership is of tremendous value. He's got oodles of playoff experience as well.
I'm not real sure where he's gonna fit in on the depth chart, but I would assume that for now, we plug him into the third line that Matt Cullen would normally center.
At $5.7M, he'll be far and away the highest payed player on the team. Next is Rod Brind'Amour, who is also 35 years old, and who makes $3.8M.

According to the TSN story, both Weight and the Canes view this as a "rental" to get them some serious playoff strength.

In my opinion, this is a strong, aggressive move that will probably make a lot of people shake their heads, but I like it. You wanna talk about a guy who puts up insane video game numbers? Doug Weight.

In other fire sale news, the Blues traded journeyman Mike Sillinger to the Preds for unproven prospect Timofei Shishkanov.

The Blues have now given up their leading goal scorer (Sillinger) and their assists and points leader (Weight). All in the midst of a change of ownership.

Maybe more on the Weight deal later.