Sportsnet ramps up the deadline circus

Sportsnet has signed the Canadian Deal Or No Deal girls to assist in their eight-hour trading deadline coverage package. Instead of opening briefcases, however, they will turn over hockey sticks — green Easton hockey sticks with the Dion Phaneuf pattern. The panel ... will ask one of the girls to turn over one in a series of numbered sticks. Whoever’s name appears on that stick — say Darcy Tucker — the panelist will then answer the question: Trade or No Trade.

— The Hat on Hockey

And, as I mentioned earlier, Eklund will be the ringmaster of the whole thing from inside his anonymous booth.

UPDATE Duhatschek also mentions an as-it-happens "mural" of all the traded players that Sportsnet is planning, something that my friend Pete Evans offered this choice response to:

I can only imagine the scene in about 20 years when some kid wonders why Grandpa Kypreos has a 40-foot mosaic of Bill Guerin, Todd Bertuzzi, Bobby Ryan and an artist's rendition of Anaheim's third-rounder hanging in the attic...

I don't know about Pete, but that's something I wouldn't mind having in my living room.