Musings on what the Conroy and Avery trades brought

To start things off, I'm relatively happy with what the Kings received by shipping away Craig Conroy to the Calgary Flames and Sean Avery to the New York Rangers.

Common knowledge was that both of these players struggled somewhat this season under Lombardi/Crawford regime. Conroy was moved to third line defense-first duty and his production took an expected major blow. Which is understandable when you're surrounded by guys like Willsie/Thornton/Ivanans and/or Kostopoulos.

Avery seemed to get his act together in the beginning of the season, when he tamed his tongue and avoided stupid penalties (including the ones for fighting), however things have gone progressively wrong as of late. I do not buy into this "clubhouse cancer", though, but still it was quite obvious that taking unnecessary penalties that somehow turned out to hurt the team, got Sean the ticket out of town.

I think that moving both Conroy and Avery to the best-suited locations (Craig loved Calgary, while Sean's show-business career can take a twist to the better in Big Apple), shows how classy our management is :).

What we got for both of them is a mix of third-line plug-ins (Jason Ward and Jamie Lundmark) who can't be expected to stick around when next year reels in, two promising prospects (high-to-middle end in Marc-Andre Cliche, and mid-level in Czech Jan Marek). There are also two draft picks from the Conroy deal (one this year and one - next).

Overall, the trades compliment the direction that the management has taken since the beginning of the season. Move larger contracts to acquire expiring ones, prospects with future and/or shot at NHL and draft picks. On the scale of 1 to 10, I would have given the Conroy deal a 7, and the Avery deal an 8. And you?