The trade out East

To ATL: Hossa + De Vries

To OTT: Heatley

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From OTT's perspective they shed 3.5 mil in cap room, both this year and next which should help them to retain Chara and Redden, or maybe only one of those two plus Spezza and Havlat.going forward.

Their defensive depth now looks something like:

Chara
Redden
Phillips
Volchenkov
Pothier
Meszaros
Schubert

They would still like to add another depth D, I'm sure. They'll have the money to do so as well, definitely on a one year deal and perhaps longer if someone suits their eye at a reasonable price.

For ATL, they move a player who requested, and probably needed, a trade for a great player in Hossa and a depth defenceman they can use. I'm not sure I'd like this trade for ATL if they just made it out of the blue, but on the other hand I think they did pretty well to trade a guy who didn't want to be in ATL for this much value. Devries will add stability on the blueline, which will be nice in front of the likely Hurme/Lehtonen tandem, if the rumors are true that Nurminen injured his knee and will have to retire.

It will be interesting to see how ATL handles the Kovalchuk contract, will they go longer term like Nash, or 3 year term like OTT with Heatley, taking him to UFA age in 3 years time? In any case the Heatley contract sets a reasonable expectation for Kovalchuk, who might want more, and perhaps get it, but probably not by much.