Friday, January 07, 2011

Late Night Rumblings

First of all, I'm addicted to the new Twitter for Mac App. For those who don't know, Apple launched a new app store for Mac Computers today. Haven't really gotten a chance to look at many yet, but the Twitter one is a definite win.

On to what really matters:

As I tweeted early this afternoon, I received a random email from an author-less sender today telling me that Jamie Langenbrunner was on his way to the Dallas Stars. I get a lot of emails on a daily basis and several times a week I get "insiders" telling me rumoured deals that are "about to go down". Usually I can discard these immediately from my own knowledge, while others quickly get shot down the second I mention them to one of my own sources. But sometimes, these emails have substance.

I remember breaking the Sean Avery to Dallas signing a couple years back. It was an email from a random person in Dallas who knew someone who knew something. While I didn't know how credible this person was, when I did some digging, I found out that Avery was indeed about to sign with the Dallas Stars.

Same situation happened in Calgary a couple of seasons ago when they re-acquired Craig Conroy in 2007. An individual from a local Calgary TV station emailed me and said "Flames have told us there is a press conference tomorrow to re-introduce Conroy." I had never talked to this person before, so I wasn't going to immediately jump the gun and make the deal official, but sure enough, a few sources later and I knew Conroy was about to be Calgary bound.

That leads us to today, when I received a similar email stating that Jamie Langenbrunner had been or was in the process of being traded to the Dallas Stars. Several hours after receiving this email, it came out that Langenbrunner was indeed on the trading block and may have been asked to waive his NTC. Either way, it looks like he's done in NJ.

Is he going to Dallas? That I don't know. To me, Dallas doesn't make sense, as we keep hearing about how they are looking to cut costs and shed salary. But either way, it's something I'm keeping my eye on.

Something else to keep an eye on? The Columbus Blue Jackets, who are apparently close to landing a significant puck moving defenseman from the Eastern Conference. No names have surfaced yet, but sources tell Hockeyleaks.com that the deal has been discussed for almost a month and that the Blue Jackets and the other team involved are ready to pull the trigger.

As we head towards the trade deadline, things are sure to heat up. A lot of teams think they are "in it" this year, and this year more than ever, I expect some big names to be on the move.