As the regular season winds down and games become more important in an effort to obtain the necessary points to procure a postseason berth, teams and their front office staff are left scrambling to try and make moves that they feel might put them over the top.

The trade deadline was compounded this season thanks to a roster freeze for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  Rosters were frozen immediately prior to the Olympics, and didn't unfreeze until Monday after their conclusion, leaving teams just a scant two and a half days to frantically work the phones in an effort to make the moves they deemed necessary.

When the dust settled and the smoke cleared, there were quite a few deals of complementary pieces, but no real major stars swapping uniforms like the Ilya Kovalchuk deal before the Olympics.  The Phoenix Coyotes were so busy swapping players and draft picks (seven deals in all), one would have thought they considered players the way one looks at modern furniture: cookie cutter pieces that can easily be replaced or swapped out with no issue.

In at least two places last night, traded players had major impacts in the contests.  In the Phoenix/Colorado contest, Wojtek Wolski, who was acquired by the Coyotes from the Avalanche, burned his former team with a game winning goal, coming with just 22 seconds remaining in the contest.  Another acquisition, Lee Stempniak, who came over from Toronto, bagged the first goal for Phoenix. 

Elsewhere, Scott Walker, who had just three goals all season in Carolina, hammered home a pair for his first multi-goal game of the year, including the game winner late in the third period, as the Washington Capitals won their franchise record twelfth consecutive home game 5-4 over the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Other teams look for youth and stockpiling draft choices.   Brian Burke made several deals for the future, shipping out Stempniak, Alexei Ponikarovsky, Martin Skoula (who was with the team less than 24 hours), Joey MacDonald and others.  Vesa Toskala was bounced from Anaheim to Calgary without ever playing a game for the Ducks.  He thinks he'll be able to help the Flames as the backup to Miikka Kiprusoff.  I'm not convinced personally, given his inability to stop the puck in Toronto, which prompted him to be shipped out to begin with.

I guess more importantly than the names that did move, were ones that didn't.  Vincent Lecavalier, Marty Turco, Chris Osgood, and Dan Hamhuis were all potential big names with trade potential before the deadline, but deals were unable to get done.  There were grumblings from Sabres fans that Darcy Regier failed to pull the trigger on anything big, instead choosing to deal Clarke MacArthur for a third and fourth round selection in the 2010 draft, and procuring Raffi Torres from Columbus for Nathan Paetsch and a second rounder. 

While those deals won't set the world on fire, especially with the Sabres struggling, they were cap strapped and would have had to dump salary in order to take any on.  That simply wasn't feasible given the price tags on the players out there.  Regier and Ruff decided to roll the dice with what they have core wise and make a few minor tweaks.  Will it pay off?  Hard to say...we'll find out how it goes in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned, there's always top notch NHL action right around the corner.