Matthew Knies and the Very Human Side of Being Traded

Matthew Knies has been pretty classy about being traded from the Toronto Maple Leafs to the Columbus Blue Jackets. But classy doesn't mean it didn't hurt.

Knies recently admitted that he was in “shock and upset” when he found out he was being traded. That makes perfect sense to me. We sometimes talk about trades as if we're moving pieces around on a hockey board. A player goes here. Another player goes there. The salary cap works. Everybody shakes hands and moves on. But the player doesn't get to move on quite that easily.

For Knies, Toronto represented home and family.

Knies had spent three years with the Maple Leafs. He knew the players. He knew the coaches. He knew where to go, who to sit beside, who to talk to, what was expected of him. He had become part of the group. Then suddenly, you're going somewhere else.

He’ll meet new players in the dressing room. New coaches. New routines. New people to figure out. And somewhere in the middle of all that, you're probably wondering a very ordinary human question: Where do I fit here? That's the part of trades we don't see very often.

Knies understood that Toronto wanted to make changes after a disappointing season. He even understood that somebody had to be moved to get a player like Kirill Marchenko. He wasn't naïve about the business. But understanding something doesn't mean you don't feel it.

And then came the positive side of the story.

Knies went to Columbus and immediately started making himself at home on the scoreboard. In his Blue Jackets debut, he set a franchise record, turning what must have been a pretty strange and uncomfortable few days into one heck of an introduction. That's hockey for you.

One minute you're leaving a team you've been with for three years, wondering what your life will look like with a bunch of new guys. A few days later, you're scoring goals in a new building, and everybody is talking about how good the trade might be for you.

I don't know if Knies will look back on the trade someday and think it was the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybe he will. Maybe he won't. But I do know this: when we talk about trades, we should remember that these aren't just transactions between general managers. They're also people leaving friends behind and walking into a dressing room where they don't know everybody's name yet.

And sometimes, if they're lucky, they get to score a few goals while they're figuring it all out.