As a Flyers player, I always respected the job general manager Bob Clarke did for our team. Every year, he would try to make the team as deep as possible with a chance to make a deep run the spring. He wouldn't just do it near the NHL trade deadline. He'd do it throughout the season, right up to the deadline.

Clarkie always said you can't make trades at the deadline (or shortly beforehand) to win the Stanley Cup. What you CAN do is make trades at any time to try to make your team better. That's always been true because you have to look at the big picture of things.

I always laugh at the self-appointed "experts" who declare which teams "won" and "lost" within hours of the deadline passing. The more you know about hockey, the more you understand how unpredictable it is. You try to add the best fits to your team needs, and players that will fit in as seamlessly as possible. But there are no guarantees.

It's not about who adds the biggest "names" at the deadline, especially when they are rentals, and not even about who adds the top available talents at positions of need. It's about fit in the lineup relative to those positional needs. It's not just about penciling in so-and-so to score points and everything else will snap into place. It's rarely that easy.

One trade I can highlight as an example was our acquisition of Adam Oates in 2002. At the time, both Keith Primeau and Jeremy Roenick were dealing with injuries and there was concern over our depth down the middle. As a result, Clarkie paid an extremely rental price on Oates: multiple first-round picks and our top goaltending prospect at the time.

Oates was a Hall of Famer; a prolific playmaker who was late in his career and only signed through that season. He stil could play, although he was slowing down. On paper, it was the type of move that could have made us much more dangerous, especially since both Prims or JR ended up being available to play.

Unfortunately, it just didn't work out. Things never clicked, and it wasn't because Adam played poorly individually. The ice vision was still there. He still make incredible passes to an open man. So why didn't it work?

The chemistry just didn't form in that short time, and couldn't be forced. The adjustments that were needed to integrate Oates into the lineup -- just just his own line , but also some revised responsibilities around it -- didn't have enough time to gel.

It might have been a different outcome if Oatesy had been with us all season or even half the season. Same players, same personnel, same coaches but more time to restructure things might have made a bigger difference.

That's not only true of rentals, by the way. When Ray Bourque went over from Boston to Colorado at the 2000 deadline (until the 11th hour, we all thought he was coming to the Flyers), it didn't click right off the bat. Through no fault of Ray's, the Avalanche went out in the second round. The next year, fully integrated with the Avs, he finally won the Stanley Cup that eluded him for so long with Boston.

I really think there is a difference in the big picture between adding someone notable as a rental versus acquiring a player who has some term left on his deal. The latter sends a message to the room that this guy is going to be here for awhile, and we all need to work together to make it fit. For that reason, last year, I really liked how Vegas got Mark Stone via trade and signed him to an extension. While I personally think the Islanders overpaid a bit this week for J-G Pageau, getting him signed to an extension lessens the overpayment and increases the chance that he'll help make a difference at some point in his Islanders tenure.

As far as rentals go, I think teams are often better off identifying a role player or two who can meet a specific need in the bottom six of a lineup than they are renting a top-six forward who is going to require lineup juggling and power play time to get the most out of during his time with the team. The exception: If a team specifically needs a scoring winger or power play specialist type, it might be worth the rental.

This year, the Flyers made two veteran rental acquisitions at the deadline. They acquired veteran role playing forward Derek Grant and Nate Thompson. Those guys can step in on the penalty kill, win faceoffs, play with some grit down the middle and add size in the trenches.

Neither one is going to have an earth-shattering offensive impact (although Grant has a career-high 14 goals this season). On the flip side, there's minimal disruption of the lineup and the Flyers are a little bit deeper down the middle and a little better equipped to handle certain types of playoff matchups as well. They traded no one from their NHL roster, so there is still the potential for someone such as Joel Farabee to help them win when a little more speed and finesse would be beneficial.

That's really what the trade deadline is about. Make your team just a little harder to play against, a little better suited to winning against certain rivals you're likely to face, and disrupt as little as possible from the chemistry. Ultimately, the right adds can help build from the existing chemistry.

There are, however, zero guarantees. The best deals on paper sometimes prove to be duds. A "shrug the shoulders" type of move might work out. And the best deals a team can make, sometimes, are the ones they DON'T make.