Relocating And Replacing

The free agent market officially opened yesterday at noon. Until that point, teams weren't allowed to talk to players without contracts. Since then, over a dozen NHLers have ditched their old teams to don new uniforms come October.

And I assure you this isn't the end of it. I'm just keeping up to date here. There will likely be a lot of big signings and probably more than a few trades in the coming weeks.

But as for the last two days, here are some of the guys who will be relocating next month:

• Joe Nieuwendyk and Gary Roberts left Toronto behind to sign with the Panthers;


• Pavol Demitra ditched the Blues for sunny Los Angeles;


• Adrian Aucoin left the Islanders for a stint in Chicago;


• Dave Scatchard also departed Long Island for a job with the Bruins;


• Bobby Holik dumped the Rangers and is bound for Atlanta;


• Long-time Avs star Adam Foote will be a Blue Jacket;


• and Philadelphia was on a roll snatching Derian Hatcher from Detroit, Mike Rathje from San Jose, and Chris Therien from Dallas.

Not only that, but to fill the void left by Aucoin's departure, the Isles inked Alexei Zhitnik, a long-time Sabre. Plus the Flyers traded blue-liner Danny Markov to Nashville for a pick in next year's draft.

Quite a few players have changed teams and that was just the first two days. Give it a few more weeks and the new NHL might look even more different when the teams hit the ice in October.

The free agent signing flurry wouldn't matter to me so much if I wasn't combing every transaction web page for the names Lecavalier and Khabibulin. I'm just hoping Jay Feaster works his magic and convinces those guys Tampa is where they should stay.

We would be a very different team without them. I'd almost venture to say they're irreplaceable.




Best Of The Best   This photo has no relevance to today's story. It's just from the 2004 All-Star Game. We won't be seeing another one until 2007 so I thought at least if I posted a picture we wouldn't forget about the concept.