Leafs gave Cote the business

By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun From a competitive sense, it made no sense.
In today's National Hockey League, however, competition only makes up a small part of the equation that governs the makeup of a team.
In welcoming holdout defenceman Dimitri Yushkevich back into the fold with a brand-new three-year, $5.8-million deal, signed at 9:30 yesterday morning, the Maple Leafs became a stronger team. A half-hour later, when they shipped 15-year veteran Sylvain Cote to Chicago for future draft choices, they gave back most of the gains they had made in the Yushkevich signing.
The goofy part is this: Cote didn't want to leave and the Leafs didn't want him to leave.
"To me, this was not an easy move to make," coach and general manager Pat Quinn said. "I have a great deal of respect for how Sylvain plays the game. He's disappointed and I kind of am, too."
Small wonder. Quinn, the coach, knows that Cote was at least his fifth-best defenceman on a team that had eight of them. But Quinn, the general manager, knows that 33-year-old Cote, currently making $1.5 million a season, is a year away from free agency and did not leap at the chance for an extension when it was offered earlier this week.
"When a guy is in his last year, he starts to become a diminishing asset," Quinn said. Which is to say that by trading Cote now at least the team got some value, something it might not have received if it had held on longer.
But Cote's real value to the Leafs might very well have been to remain here, taking a regular shift, trying to help a team that got to the final four of the Stanley Cup tournament last year reach the next level.
Unfortunately, that's not how the game is played anymore. In today's game, the bottom line is every bit as important as the blue line. Lopping off that $1.5 million from the payroll got them almost even on the Yushkevich signing.
And that's what the Cote deal was all about. It was just business. Debits and credits.
There is the matter of the numbers game, of course, with respect to the size of the roster. To get both Yushkevich and Alyn McCauley back into the mix, somebody had to go. In a hockey sense, that would not have meant that Cote would have to be the odd man out. It probably would have been Chris McAllister or Alexander Karpovtsev, but neither would have the same kind of trade value as Cote.
If budgetary constraints weren't an issue, one of the Leafs would have suffered a timely injury yesterday at practice. But the Leafs' front office has determined that, despite an enormous revenue jump in their first year at the Air Canada Centre, the budget is sacred. None of that extra cash is going to be channeled into the betterment of the on-ice product.
This is not to say that Cote was the second-coming of Bobby Orr. He is a strong skater with some offensive skills who fit rather well into the Leafs' style of play. If needed, he can fill in on the power play without the team missing a beat.

GREAT GUY
"He used to catch a lot of guys coming back," Curtis Joseph said. "Very few people ever beat him wide. He's a great skater and a great guy in the locker room. We all enjoyed his company."
The lone knock against Cote was that he seemed to wear down during last year's playoff run. In the semi-finals against Buffalo, he generally was regarded as one of the Leafs that did not come up large. That may or may not be a fair criticism but it's the only one that's out there.
For a guy who had been here just 18 months, it was an emotionally wrenching revelation for Cote. He loved it in Toronto. He cared about his team and about his teammates and was excited about this team's prospects.
The last time he was traded, from Washington to Toronto at the tail end of the 1997-98 season, the Caps went on to the Stanley Cup final and he went to a team destined to finish out of the playoffs.
Now, the Leafs seem to be headed if not for lofty heights, at least in the right direction again and Cote is banished to a team that doesn't appear to be headed anywhere but down the drain.
But fairness doesn't enter into it. It's about business, plain and simple. On that score, it was day that could make only the accountants happy.

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