from Damien Cox of the Toronto Star,

Lamoriello’s team is now 10th in the East and has lost eight in a row, the 40-year-old Brodeur hasn’t won a game since March 15, Ilya Kovalchuk can’t get healthy and defenceman Anton Volchenkov was sat down for four games on Thursday for elbowing Brad Marchand.

Suddenly, this is starting to look a little like Calgary East, a situation in need of a substantial step back to rebuild but one in which that approach is likely to be received badly.

It certainly didn’t start to happen at last week’s trade deadline. Instead, Steve Sullivan was acquired for a seventh-round pick, another coat of paint to try to stave off the creeping mildew that has impacted this roster since, well, Niedermayer left town after the 2003-04 season.

A steady stream of stalwarts has departed as unrestricted free agents — Niedermayer, Brian Gionta, Brian Rafalski, Scott Gomez, John Madden, Paul Martin — without fetching anything in prospects or players before they left. That has been the Lamoriello approach to dealing with free agents, and really he’s been burned only on Niedermayer and Rafalski.

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