Wild trade Martin Havlat to SJ for Dany Heatley

Wild trade Havlat for Heatley

Wild trade Martin Havlat to San Jose for Dany Heatley in late-night Independence Day Eve shocker!

Written by Derek Felska | 03 July 2011

"You ain't seen nothin' yet, B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet, Here's something that you never gonna forget B-B-B-Baby, you just ain't seen nothin' yet" by Bachman Turner Overdrive really hits home with the bold moves the Minnesota Wild have been making this offseason thus far. It has been a fairly lazy and relaxed July 3rd, where I would click refresh on TSN's UFA tracker and see only a pittance of moves. In fact, there were just 4 acquisitions for today and that includes the Wild signing Hastings, Minnesota and former Minnesota Golden Gopher center Jeff Taffe (more on him later). It was such a lazy and relaxing day I took a late afternoon nap and figured there was no other big news. The most shocking thing that occurred was a painfully one-sided (salary dump) trade by the Nashville Predators who dealt Matt Lombardi and promising blueliner Cody Franson to Toronto for Brett Lebda, John Slaney and a 4th round pick. Ugly deal, but Nashville is clearly positioning itself to throw all it has towards franchise defenseman Shea Weber. The only other eventful part of the day was Novak Djokovic beating Raphael Nadal in 4 sets to take the Men's singles title in Wimbledon (great match by the way). Still, nothing too crazy right? That was until about 9PM; when I saw a curious post on the wild.com message boards. It stated "Wild trade Havlat to SJ for Dany Heatley" and at first I said "yea right, no way that happened." I check Twitter and sure enough I see a tweet from TSN's Bob McKenzie who's still breaking news despite being on the lake (nice job Bob) on 'vacation.' Soon there was a tweet from Minneapolis Star Tribune's Michael Russo and then TSN's Darren Dreger and it was obvious it was official and just like that I had to deal with the reality that Wild General Manager Chuck Fletcher swung a 2nd straight blockbuster with the San Jose Sharks as he dealt streaky winger Martin Havlat for hard shooting Sharks' sniper Dany Heatley.

I have to admit I'm still in disbelief and so are a lot of fans across the State of Hockey. After watching message boards and my twitter feed (StateofHckyNews) light up the effect the deal still hadn't hit me. On my computer sits a hockey stick framed autographed photo of Martin Havlat that I got as a gift from my father, it looks a little awkward there sitting next to my autographed Cal Clutterbuck puck but I don't think I'll look to get rid of it though. I really thought this summer was going to be fairly bland and boring and we've been one of the most active teams this summer. I think its safe to say that despite the fact its July, hockey is creating some discussion in Minnesota again. Pardon me for using a Martha Stewart expression, "It's a good thing." (click on the link for the rest of the article)

This one caught me completely by surprise. I try to capture that spirit of surprise in the article and then try to really identify what it means for both clubs. At this point I'm quite happy. What do you think? I should point out that I did quote some posters and twitter'ers out there so your name may come up in the article. Enjoy!

Hopefully he doesn't kill anyone. Never did care for him, but the trade does surprise me a lot.

Well, the Wild finally have shooters to go with their playmakers!

I agree, the team finally has a few shooters up front and I think that will help out a ton.

I think this will help... but I don't think this will change us from a "bubble" team to a team challenging for the division. If anything, this might have at least got us into the playoffs a bit more frequently.

We're challenging for 8th in the conference at this point.