from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,

“Have you heard anything?” the NHL general manager asked, and Darren Dreger hadn’t, not really. There is always gossip, and the phones never stop getting worked. But through a combination of the diving Canadian dollar, a flat salary cap, and unprecedented parity in the NHL, the league was an off-ice ghost town in the first three months of this season. General managers got to the point where they were asking Dreger, one of TSN’s hockey insiders, to see if they were missing anything. They weren’t.

“I don’t ever remember it being that slow,” says Dreger.

Wednesday afternoon, the dam finally burst. At 4:42, Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports tweeted that Vinny Lecavalier was being traded from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. At 4:44, TSN’s Bob McKenzie said Luke Schenn was going, and maybe Lecavalier too. At 4:45, he said both. At 4:46, TSN’s Darren Dreger said the return was Jordan Weal and a third-round pick. At 4:47, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported the same thing.

There was more. Philadelphia was retaining salary, which Friedman and Dreger tweeted at almost the exact same time, 4:54. At 5:01 and 5:02, respectively, McKenzie and TSN’s Pierre LeBrun both reported that Lecavalier would retire at season’s end, which was the other key to the trade. Meanwhile, at 4:58, Dreger also reported centre Mike Richards, out of the game after a drug case, had been signed by the Washington Capitals.

The hockey world reacted as it always does to the increasingly rare hockey trade: like a dog chasing the first squirrel it has ever seen.

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