Jokinen to Calgary

The Flames made a huge splash with the acquisition of Olli Jokinen from the Phoenix Coyotes for Matthew Lombardi, Brandon Prust and a first rounder.

			2008-2009 Statistics		2009	2010
To Calgary	Position	Age	GP/MIN	Points	Cap Hit	Cap Hit
Olli Jokinen	F	30	57	42	$5.25 million	$5.25 million
2009 3rd Round Pick
			2008-2009 Statistics		2009	2010
To Phoenix	Position	Age	GP/MIN	Points	Cap Hit	Cap Hit
Matthew Lombardi	F	27	50	30	$1.816 million	$1.816 million
Brandon Prust	F	25	25	2	$500,000	$500,000
Conditional 1st Round Pick

This was the bigger deal of the day and it happened relatively early in the day and it saw the Coyotes drop a guy who doesn't have the best reputation with the club for a couple of younger players and a pick. The Flames do end up with a top line centre out of the whole deal, which was what they were definitely after today.

The biggest question that comes to mind is what kind of chemistry will Jokinen have with the rest of the team. I won't go out of my way to make any wild accusations, but there are some who speculate that he might not fit. We'll all have to wait and see about that.

In the Draft, Dennis had his player (Jokinen) move to a better offensive team and Ryan had his player (Lombardi) move to an underachieving team. Right now, I think Lombardi has the best chance of staying about the same, instead of going down, while Jokinen will need to be fit in somewhere and it's questionable to know where that'll be right away. Ryan will need this trade to pay off more, as he is still somewhere near the running of the money in the Draft.