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Blackhawks snag Tomas Jurco in rare trade with Red Wings

The Chicago Blackhawks acquired winger Tomas Jurco from the Detroit Red Wings on Friday, sending a 2017 third-round pick for a player whose time with the Wings was just about done.

This used be weirder, when the Blackhawks and the Red Wings were blood rivals in the same division. The last time they made a trade was almost a decade ago: Feb. 26, 2007, when the Blackhawks traded Kyle Calder to Detroit for Jason Williams. Before that, it was all the way back to 1999, when Detroit acquired Chris Chelios from the ‘Hawks.

Maybe things are easier now that they’re in different conferences.

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Jurco, 24, is a restricted free agent this summer. He’s played 159 games over four seasons in the NHL, including just 16 this season. He hasn’t scored a point in 2016-17, and has just 39 for his career, 15 of them goals. Jurco hasn’t come close to meeting the expectations his viral YouTube puck wizardry promised when the Red Wings drafted him at No. 35 overall in 2011.

This season has been hellish: Jurco was a healthy scratch on most nights, after having missed the first six weeks of the season after offseason back surgery. He just couldn’t crack the lineup.

“It’s hard. If I had 25 games to just let Jurco play, I think he’d be a real good player in the league,” said coach Jeff Blashill, who coached him at Grand Rapids in the AHL as well. “But ultimately to do that, you got to beat somebody out.”

So he joins the Blackhawks to add a little pop to their left side or depth to their right side, depending on how they see him. The timing of the trade would seem to indicate that the Blackhawks were in on Patrick Eaves, whom the Dallas Stars traded to the Anaheim Ducks. But the conditional pick the Ducks sent back could become a first-rounder, and that might have been too rich for Stan Bowman.

Maybe a change of scenery and some ice time gets Jurco going. As it stands, getting a third out of him was fair value for GM Ken Holland, who may have made the first of several trades as the Red Wings’ playoff streak stumbles to its conclusion.

Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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