Good news for the Los Angeles Kings’ thin forward corps and the Boston Bruins’ shaky salary cap situation: the once-dead Marco Sturm trade is now officially done. Fluto Shinzawa of the Boston Globe reports that Sturm passed his physical and can now play for the second California NHL team of his career.
(He originally played for the San Jose Sharks when Dean Lombardi was part of that organization. You might remember Sturm as arguably the biggest piece that went to Boston in the lopsided Joe Thornton trade.)
Sturm is in the final year of a four-year deal that pays him $3.5 million per year (in both salary and salary cap hit), so while there is some cost to bringing him in, it’s not a huge gamble.
Considering his speed and injury-prone nature, it’s not that different from my summer time suggestions that the Kings trade for Simon Gagne. He doesn’t have the same high-scoring ceiling, but Sturm crossed the 20-goal mark seven times during his injury-ravaged 12 years in the league.
Of course, it’s hard not to look at some of the Kings’ recent history with injury prone players and wonder if they’re playing with fire. From Adam Deadmarsh to Jason Allison to Ziggy Palffy and Pavol Demitra, the Kings could have changed their team logo to Wile E. Coyote in the ‘90s and early ‘00s if it weren’t for Phoenix.
Still, they aren’t giving up much for a player who can provide scoring depth to a team that is a little too dependent on Anze Kopitar for goals. It seems like both the Bruins and Kings “won” from this deal, even if the gains are pretty modest.