Sizing Up NHL’s ‘Most Wanted’ Heading Into Deadline at LinesMaker

Sizing Up NHL’s ‘Most Wanted’ Heading Into Deadline

The Trade Dead­line is just days away. There have already been a few intrigu­ing moves, but some of the biggest names that have been reported to be avail­able are still out there. Here’s a look at NHL.com’s NHL’s “Most Wanted” list in the final week­end lead­ing up the Mon­day after­noon deadline.

RICK NASH, RW, COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS

VITALS

6-foot-4, 219 pounds
Age: 27
Shoots: Left
2011-12: 20 goals, 42 points in 60 games
Career: 279 goals, 530 points in 652 games

WANTED FOR:

Nash is a legit­i­mate star, one of the top 10–15 play­ers in the League when he is on top of his game. He is one of the top power for­wards in the NHL and has six 30-goal sea­sons despite rarely play­ing with a bona fide No. 1 cen­ter dur­ing his time in Columbus.

He was one of the top play­ers on the gold-medal win­ning Cana­dian Olympic team in 2010, and has deliv­ered for his coun­try in the World Cham­pi­onship as well. Nash can be a dom­i­nant force at the offen­sive end, and before this sea­son has been a qual­ity penalty killer for the Blue Jack­ets as well.

BEWARE

Nash has six more years on his con­tract at $ 7.8 mil­lion per sea­son — that’s the fifth-highest cap hit in the League. He has played four career NHL play­off games in eight sea­sons. He has scored only 65 goals in the two pre­vi­ous sea­sons com­bined and is on pace for just 27 this campaign.

DUSTIN BROWN, RW, LOS ANGELES KINGS

VITALS

6-foot, 204 pounds
Age: 27
Shoots: Right
2011-12: 14 goals, 31 points in 61 games
Career: 155 goals, 336 points in 574 games

WANTED FOR:

Brown scored at least 24 goals in each of the four pre­vi­ous sea­sons, but everyone’s pro­duc­tion is down in Los Ange­les this sea­son. He’s not the biggest guy, but is one of the League’s top vol­ume hit­ters — he has at least 285 in each of the past four sea­sons and is at 215 to this point with about a quar­ter of the cam­paign remaining.

Brown is a sound two-way player and has also been durable despite his propen­sity for phys­i­cal play. In his sev­enth full sea­son, he has missed a total of nine games since becom­ing a reg­u­lar in the Kings’ lineup. He’s aver­ag­ing more than 20 min­utes of ice time per con­test and plays in all sit­u­a­tions — Brown is a pri­mary weapon on the power play and a sec­ondary option on the penalty kill.

BEWARE

Brown has been con­sid­ered one of the top young, phys­i­cal for­wards in the League and has been Los Ange­les’ cap­tain for three-plus sea­sons. He also only makes $ 3.175 mil­lion per sea­son and has two years left on a very team-friendly contract.

That all sounds like it should be in the “wanted for” sec­tion, right? So why are the Kings, who are des­per­ate to make progress after spend­ing the past few sea­sons as a “team of the future,” will­ing to trade him, as reports sug­gested Thurs­day before being tamped down a day later? It is cer­tainly a red flag. Brown has been so-so for the Kings in the post­sea­son, but it is a pretty small sam­ple size (12 games). He also went score­less at the 2010 Olympics for the United States, but does have 24 points in his past 23 games at the World Championship.

ALES HEMSKY, RW, EDMONTON OILERS

VITALS

6-foot, 185 pounds
Age: 28
Shoots: Right
2011-12: 5 goals, 26 points in 46 games
Career: 119 goals, 421 points in 536 career games

WANTED FOR

Hem­sky is a super-skilled play­maker, a shifty for­ward who can com­fort­ably fit in a con­tend­ing team’s top-six for­wards. He has three sea­sons with at least 66 points and four 40-assist campaigns.

He had 17 points in 24 games dur­ing Edmonton’s run to the Stan­ley Cup Final in 2005-06. Hem­sky has been respon­si­ble in his own end and typ­i­cally played against tough com­pe­ti­tion for the Oil­ers — he’s faced the second-toughest com­pe­ti­tion among the team’s for­wards this year, accord­ing to Behind the Net’s qual­ity of com­pe­ti­tion rat­ings, and is in the top six in each of the past four sea­sons where he’s played more than 30 games.

BEWARE

Injuries, injuries, injuries — Hem­sky has missed more than 100 games in the past three sea­sons. He had 66 points in only 69 games in the two pre­vi­ous cam­paigns. While he was nearly a point-per-game player from 2007-08 to 2010-11 (203 points in 215 games), he has slumped in 2011-12 and his 46-point pace is his worst since before the work stoppage.

MAREK ZIDLICKY, D, MINNESOTA WILD

VITALS

5-foot-11, 190 pounds
Age: 35
Shoots: Right
2011-12: 0 goals, 13 points in 40 games
Career: 60 goals, 297 points in 547 games

WANTED FOR

Zidlicky can skate, move the puck and helps gen­er­ate the offense from the back end. He was a late bloomer, not leav­ing Europe until the 2003-04 cam­paign, but he’s reached 30 assists in six of his first eight NHL sea­sons. He has 160 career power-play points, includ­ing four sea­sons of 20 or more.

BEWARE

His pro­duc­tion slipped after join­ing the Wild. It was orig­i­nally ratio­nal­ized by the team’s defense-first phi­los­o­phy, but he’s hav­ing the worst sea­son of his NHL career. Zidlicky also com­plained to the media after being a healthy scratch, and has one more year left on his con­tract at $ 4 mil­lion. He’s never been known for his work in the defen­sive zone, and he has 14 career play­off games on his resume.

BRYAN ALLEN, D, CAROLINA HURRICANES

VITALS

6-foot-5, 226 pounds
Age: 31
Shoots: Left
2011-12: 0 goals, 8 points in 61 games
Career: 28 goals, 112 points in 580 games

WANTED FOR

Allen is a steady, stay-at-home defense­man with size and expe­ri­ence. He’s also soon to be an unre­stricted free agent. Every year at this time there are about 14 teams look­ing for that exact type of player. Hal Gill, Pavel Kubina and Nick­las Gross­man have already been moved, so Allen is pos­si­bly the best guy who fits the descrip­tion on a team that is not def­i­nitely still try­ing to make the playoffs.

He has done exactly what a defen­sive defense­man is sup­posed to do this sea­son for the Hur­ri­canes. Allen has played against the second-toughest com­pe­ti­tion among Carolina’s defense­men, accord­ing to Behind the Net’s qual­ity of com­pe­ti­tion rat­ings (behind Tim Glea­son, who would be in this spot had he not signed a four-year con­tract exten­sion), and has been on the ice for the second-fewest goals per 60 min­utes at even strength (behind Jaroslav Spacek, who might also be available).

BEWARE

Allen has played more than 500 NHL games, but has only seven play­off games on his resume, and they were all as a fill-in dur­ing the course of three sea­sons with the Canucks from 2001-04. He’s also not going to offer any­thing at the offen­sive end.

The main issue with Allen might be GM Jim Rutherford’s ask­ing price. The Hur­ri­canes aren’t actu­ally out of it in the East, and while he has traded Alexei Ponikarovsky, he signed Glea­son and Tuomo Ruutu and hasn’t com­mit­ted to deal­ing Allen or Spacek yet. A rival GM might need to pay a heavy price to extract Allen.

JOSH HARDING, G, MINNESOTA WILD

VITALS

6-foot-1, 197 pounds
Age: 27
Catches: Right
2011-12: 9–9-3, 2.59 goals-against aver­age, .919 save per­cent­age
Career: 37–48-0–5, 2.64 goals-against aver­age, .916 save percentage

WANTED FOR

Hard­ing has been one of the League’s top backup goal­tenders for the past five sea­sons or so, minus the one he missed with a knee injury. His place on the list has a lot to do with cir­cum­stance — Min­nesota has a young, capa­ble goal­tender to replace him in Matt Hack­ett, he’s a pend­ing UFA, and the Wild could use him as a trade chip to land some­thing to help them make the playoffs.

There is also now a demand for his — or another goaltender’s — ser­vices. Toronto, Ottawa and, pos­si­bly, Chicago could all be look­ing for a goal­tender this weekend.

BEWARE

Hard­ing has never been a No. 1 goal­tender at the NHL level. The most starts he has had in a sea­son is 29, and he has a total of 20 min­utes of post­sea­son experience.

A few years ago, Hard­ing might have been thought of in the same class as other starters-in-waiting like Jonathan Bernier, Cory Schnei­der and Tuukka Rask, but not as much any­more. He also missed all of last sea­son because of a major knee injury.

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