It's the most important day of the NHL regular season. Teams have until 3:00 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday to make trades, and make trades they will. Dozens of them. The best teams in the League are trying to get better; the worst are trying to cut costs and acquire some prospects for the future. And if you're one of the many teams in between? It could be years before you escape the middle class and drink from the Stanley Cup.

It used to be worse. Before the latest collective bargaining agreement was signed after the 2005-05 lockout, the trade deadline was 26 days before the end of the regular season. The League's richest teams though nothing of “renting” a player for less than a month. Now the deadline is 40 days before the end of the season, making it a little riskier and more expensive for teams to pull the trigger.

But they do anyway. A typical scenario revolves around a skilled player with a pricey contract that's about to expire, playing for a team with little or no hope of doing well in the postseason. Such a team has very little leverage in this situation and is happy just to get out from under the contract. An elite team with lots of money to throw around will swoop in, offer a package of prospects and/or draft picks, and end up with another quality player to add to the roster. This is one reason why it's so rare for an outsider to buck the NHL odds and win the Cup.

The better the player being traded, the more a team will get in return. Perhaps the most famous deadline deal took place in 1996, when the St. Louis Blues shipped three young players and two draft picks to the Los Angeles Kings for Wayne Gretzky. It didn't quite work out the way St. Louis had hoped. Gretzky scored 37 points in 31 games, but the Blues didn't even make it out of the second round, and The Great One signed with the New York Rangers that summer.

Even in that trade, none of the five players acquired by Los Angeles amounted to much in the NHL. The Atlanta Thrashers are hoping for better results after sending Ilya Kovalchuk to the New Jersey Devils a month ago in a package that landed defenseman Johnny Oduya, a late bloomer who built up a cult following in the Swamp with his offensive skills. Atlanta got a little more in return by trading Kovalchuk early, but once you get nearer the deadline, you're more likely to get something like the “future considerations” the Anaheim Ducks settled for on Tuesday when they sent former All-Star defenseman Nick Boynton to the Chicago Blackhawks.

Let's take a trip down memory lane and look at some of the most important deadline deals of the past 30 years.

March 10, 1980: The New York Islanders acquire Butch Goring from the Los Angeles Kings for Billy Harris and Dave Lewis. Goring scores 19 points in 21 playoff games and the Islanders win their first of four consecutive Stanley Cups.

March 8, 1988: The Boston Bruins send Geoff Courtnall, Bill Ranford and future considerations to the Edmonton Oilers for Andy Moog. The Oilers take the Cup that year, and again in 1990 (both times over Moog and the Bruins) with Ranford winning the Conn Smythe Trophy.

March 4, 1991: The Hartford Whalers trade Ron Francis, Grant Jennings and Ulf Samuelsson to the Pittsburgh Penguins for John Cullen, Jeff Parker and Zarley Zalapski. Pittsburgh wins the next two Stanley Cups.

March 6, 2000: The Colorado Avalanche obtain Ray Bourque and Dave Andreychuk from the Bruins for Brian Rolston, Samuel Pahlsson, Martin Grenier and a 2000 first-round draft pick. Bourque wins his only Cup the next year (after another deadline deal lands defenseman Rob Blake) and promptly retires.

March 9, 2006: The Carolina Hurricanes pick up Mark Recchi from the Penguins in exchange for Niklas Nordgren, Krystofer Kolanos and a second-round pick in 2007. Recchi scores seven goals in the playoffs and the Hurricanes win their first and only Cup in franchise history.

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