Ducks Acquire Whitney

Well, we could have ourselves our next biggest trade of the season here and it looks like a pretty good deal for both teams on the surface. The Penguins have moved one of their prized young defenseman to Anaheim for a quality winger and a prospect forward. At first glance (see below), this deal is of great quality and it could really pave the way for one of the bigger defensemen to be lifted from the Anaheim organization in another deal.

			2008-2009 Statistics		2009	2010
To Anaheim	Position	Age	GP/MIN	Points	Cap Hit	Cap Hit
Ryan Whitney	D	26	28	13	$4 million	$4 million
			2008-2009 Statistics		2009	2010
To Pittsburgh	Position	Age	GP/MIN	Points	Cap Hit	Cap Hit
Chris Kunitz	F	29	62	34	$3.725 million	$3.725 million
Eric Tangradi	D	20	0	0	N/A	UD

From a pure capology perspective, both teams pretty well leveled off their cap hits with this move, as the Penguins may have hired themselves some new help for their talented centres by acquiring Kunitz. Like I mentioned before, the Ducks have now acquired a younger premier defenseman, which should be more than enough reason to move Chris Pronger or Scott Niedermayer (both of whom are featured prominently in trade rumours). This could be the domino that starts a lot of movement in the next six days.

Quickly, from the pool perspective... Ryan Whitney has had some success for Grant since coming back from injury and will now move to a different sort of system in the West, where he'll be used in a good puck moving position from the back end. Depending on which (if any) of the big two defenders move, he'll get to play with some more great talent, like he did with Sergei Gonchar in Pittsburgh. Chris Kunitz, on the other hand, will likely get some great minutes with either Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin (possibly time with Jordan Staal) and his nose for the net should help those centres out significantly. Kunitz is a pick of Wes' in the Draft, which may help him significantly.