Wow. San Jose Sharks general manager Doug Wilson continues to make moves, as the team announced today that they shipped off forward Dany Heatley to the Minnesota Wild in exchange for Martin Havlat. It's an ... interesting trade, to say the least. For the most part, Heatley appears to be the better player all-around and at the same position, so what do the Sharks get in this trade? Heatley is a productive scorer, albeit coming off a relatively down year with the team, but productive nonetheless. Havlat has been productive as well, but not on the level of Heatley, and without a certain dynamic that he brings to the offense. Jump for the rest.
That isn't to say it's a terrible trade by any means, Havlat will slot right in and provide some speed on the ice, a lot of which they lost when they sent Devin Setoguchi to the Wild along with Charlie Coyle and a first-round pick in exchange for Brent Burns and a second-round pick. Havlat isn't a bad player by any stretch of the imagination, and has less of a cap hit than Heatley, which lead Jason Plank from Fear The Fin to speculate that more moves might be on the way. The Sharks already had a decent amount of cap room, now they have even more.
There's a lot of moves being made this offseason for the Sharks, all in an effort to suggest that they don't want to just "keep trying" at winning the Stanley Cup with the great assortment of guys they have, they want to shuffle and get something going. Maybe Havlat is going to be an integral piece in that evasive Stanley Cup puzzle, or maybe this trade is paving the way for something bigger ... your guess is about as good as mine.