Fanshots

Every fan does it. There’s no use denying it. In fact, today is one of the biggest days for it in sports.

Playing armchair General Manager is one of the perks of being an average sports fan. We get to sit back, think about what we would love to see happen with our favorite franchises and make the deals that need to get done. However, much of the time the deals that fans start talking about are a little over the top. Sometimes they are totally hypothetical – but other times you can tell that the fans really think that their deals could happen.

With the NHL Trade Deadline in full swing today there has been a lot of buzz from NHL fans all over the league. It started last week and picked up steam over the weekend. There were rumors, thoughts, ideas, pleas to management and hypothetical questions asked to other fans.

My favorite “would you” trade so far was posed about the Montreal Canadiens and Edmonton Oilers. The question was asked to Habs fans – if offered would you trade PK Subban and Carey Price to the Oilers for Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle and Ryan Whitney. My quick answer (as a Canadiens fan) was “no thank you.” I’m not sure that trade makes sense for either franchise. In fact, I’m certain that it doesn’t make sense for Edmonton. There’s no way that they are giving up either Hall or Eberle in a trade that doesn’t bring them Sidney Crosby or Alexander Ovechkin.

But that’s the beauty of the armchair game. We can think about things like this. It’s the same in all sports. When baseball fans start dreaming about adding that 1 great player to their team to get them over the hump we see it. Right now there are a lot of MLB fans dreaming on an Albert Pujols deal. What would your team have to give up to pry the best player in the game out of St. Louis? And would you do the deal if you knew what you had to give up?

It always seems that deadline days bring out the best and worst of us. And hockey fans seem to be at both extremes more so than any other sport. NBA basketball has started to see more hype surrounding their deadline – and major league baseball is hit or miss year after year. But hockey stands at the top of the list as far as movement, excitement, hype and let down season after season.

Side note: The NFL trade deadline regularly passes without most fans knowing that it has come and gone.

In the end 99.999999999999999999% of us will never actually be involved in the process that goes into making an actual trade in pro sports (fantasy sports don’t count). But it sure is fun to think about.