It took nearly four days, but Bill Guerin is finally off the Island.
The former Islanders captain, who sat out the team’s last two games in anticipation of a trade, was sent to Pittsburgh about an hour before yesterday’s trade deadline in exchange for a conditional draft pick.
GM Garth Snow said he was not frustrated by how things transpired, but the Islanders certainly wanted to get more for Guerin than they did. They received at least a fifth-rounder, which originally belonged to Tampa Bay. The Isles will get Pittsburgh’s fourth-rounder if the Penguins make the playoffs, which will increase to a third-rounder if they win a series.
And with the Isles in full rebuilding mode, they could have been expected to deal some of their other veteran unrestricted free agents – Doug Weight or Andy Hilbert – but Snow moved only Guerin.
“We weren’t just going to go in and have a fire sale,” Snow said, adding he would be interested in re-signing Weight, Hilbert or both.
Guerin was pulled from the lineup after warmups prior to the game against the Sabres on Saturday. Snow insisted that he didn’t have a trade in place at the time.
“There was no deal,” Snow said. “I was talking with a team and it became evident we would probably be in a situation where we were going to trade Bill by the deadline. I didn’t want to take the risk and I talked to Bill’s agent and Bill himself and we didn’t want to take the risk in him injuring himself.”
In the meantime, however, the market for the 38-year-old with a team-high 16 goals on the season dried up considerably.
“It was a pretty painful process,” Guerin told TSN. “We thought we had a deal done with another team a couple of days ago and then it made things a little awkward for four days or so just waiting for something to happen.”
The Isles’ first test without Guerin comes tonight at the Coliseum against the Rangers, who did some major retooling of their own yesterday, trading for Toronto center Nik Antropov and Phoenix defenseman Derek Morris.
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The Isles also activated Nate Thompson and sent Jon Sim to Bridgeport after he cleared waivers for the second time this season.