I would kick a puppy to listen in on those phone calls.

Trade season is almost upon us folks. While the relatively late March 4th trade deadline still exactly two months away, my gut tells me we'll be seeing a few moves involving any and all teams in the league a while before that.

Every year general managers talk to the media about how they will be patient with what they have, they want to retain their youth and picks because "that's how the new NHL works", and that they won't, in simple terms, make a stupid move. And every year, right up into those last entertaining hours watching TSN's TRADE DEADLINE DAY BONANZA SHOW, we still a lot of desperate, wasteful, and mind-numbingly stupid moves. It never fails. And this is why I, and I would think many other Leaf fans, are licking their collective chops in anticipation of seeing what we have and what it will bring.

The reasons why I think some teams, especially those with any cap space, will try to pull the trigger earlier is this:

The deadline does nothing but drive the price of players up the closer we get to 5:00 p.m. on that day. More teams are likely to be involved with or know about the player you're after, and thus bidding wars commence. Team A will be targeting Player 1, and Team B will be targeting Player 2, but as soon as Team fails to acquire Player 1, they will turn their sights onto Player 2. A lot of general managers will kick the tires on players they might not even be all that interested in simply because they (1) want to give the impression to their fans that they aren't NOT trying to improve the team and (2) the GM doesn't want to feel like he was left out of the party (which is more of an ego thing than anything else).

How do we know this to be true? Simply look at the most ridiculous deals made over the last couple of years (or the rumored deals that were nixed by NTCs, I'm looking at you Tomas), and you can see that the general manager, in an effort to ensure he got his guy, made an offer so ridiculously out of whack that his competition would back off.

The rumor mill has been churning quite well these last few weeks, and the team that keeps getting the mention along with Toronto is the Columbus Blue Jackets, most notably for their interest in Antropov and/or Kubina.

With the all this said, it would likely make sense for Scott Howson to begin talking trade with Burke now as opposed to say, March 3rd, to ensure that any possible transactions remain strictly between Burke and Howson. They will have all the time in the world to hammer out a fair deal without market fluctuations coming from other teams' interest in said players, or with prescident setting trades happening prior to the conssumation of the potential deal.

This sort of scenario isn't necessarily fact by any means, as there is no concrete evidence that Burke and Howson are even engaged in trade discussion, but as an example that could be expanded to include all teams, one might surmize that a deal is likely coming sooner rather than later.

Burke knows that his assets will only increase in value the closer we get to March 4th, but he also must be chomping at the bit to make his first mark on this franchise. That, and should teams look for other options come trade deadline day, the cap space required may not be there for guys like Kaberle, Kubina and Toskala once the music stops and teams start looking for chairs.