The Thrashers already have made two deals in advance of the NHL trade deadline. More are expected.
The league trade deadline is Monday at 3 p.m., and Atlanta general manager Rick Dudley recently said he expects to be involved in additional talk.
“I’d like to win a championship,” Dudley said late last week. “I’d like to do it over a period of time. I can’t say right now that we are a Stanley Cup favorite, so any deal we make the definition of it has to be both present and future. We won’t do anything to take away from our chances to make the playoffs this year. We also won’t trade for a 35-year-old player either. If a deal comes up that meets that criteria we will certainly entertain it.”
Dudley made no secret that he wanted to add two forwards and a defenseman. He got two of those when he acquired forward Blake Wheeler and defenseman Mark Stuart from Boston on Feb. 18. The Thrashers also traded veteran defenseman Brent Sopel to Montreal on Feb. 24 for minor-league forward Ben Maxwell.
Dudley has a penchant for roster tweaking and midway through the season he said that he expected to do the same with the Thrashers.
“We think we put a couple of pieces in place so we are not looking for quite as much as we were,” Dudley said. “If we could make a deal to get another Blake Wheeler-type player, we would do that.”
Dudley also said last week that he is constantly looking for scoring and wants the team to get bigger.
Forward Tim Stapleton, who was signed as a free agent on Nov. 30, was placed on waivers on Saturday. The move could be considered a precursor to a trade, possibly freeing up a roster spot for Monday.
The Thrashers entered Sunday’s game against Toronto as the 11th team in the Eastern Conference, five points behind Carolina for the eighth and final playoff spot with 20 games remaining in the regular season.
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