Leafs deal Avery to STL for Kessel
Sean Avery's long tenure as a Leaf came to end this afternoon after he was dealt south to St. Louis. Avery was acquired from Boston early in the 05-06 season for someone who has since retired (Eric Weinrich I think). Since then he's tallied 78 points and a load of PIM's in 232 games as a Leaf. Those stats aren't great but since he had a decent all around game, a very cheap contract, and is a huge a-hole, we never had a reason to trade him. But he'll need a new contract this summer so we've been more willing to move him.
And as a result, today he was dealt to STL along with prospects Bill Sweatt and Danik Paquette for Phil Kessel and $500k.
We figure Avery will be a little better this season but Kessel certainly has more long term potential, in particular offensively. So we were willing to add two prospects to get him. Sweatt was one of our 1st round picks in 2007 and was a 2nd round pick in the NHL. He's a good prospect with a lot of speed. And Paquette is a guy we picked in the 2nd round this month, who was then picked in the 3rd round in the NHL.
Today we also took some big steps towards getting back to the ECHL roster limit.
- We had 20 ECHL prospects this morning.
- We signed Cody Bass to a contract. He'll be in the AHL this year.
- This trade saw Sweatt and Paquette leave the team.
- And we released Matt Delahey, who we never technically had because he was already picked by the Sabres.
So we have 16 and will be voting the last guy off the island soon.
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