Jim Rutherford has been a busy man this week as he made his second trade in four days by dealing winger Alexei Ponikarovsky to the New Jersey Devils for a 2012 4th round pick and defenseman Joe Sova. The timing of this trade may have been a bit weird, but I think it is safe to say that we all saw a move like this coming. Ponikarovsky is a pending unrestricted free agent and signed to a cheap $1.5 mil. contract so he was probably the easiest to move even if his performance in Carolina hasn't been great. My belief was that a team looking for a depth forward would give up a mid-round pick for him and that's pretty much what happened here. It's not a blockbuster trade or anything but it's a deal that works for both teams and should tell us a little bit about the market over the next few weeks.
My expectations for Ponikarovsky were pretty low when we signed him because of the season he had in Los Angeles but I was slightly optimistic because a lot of his struggles were ...
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January 20, 2012
