Ponikarovsky: deadline not too dramatic

As the trade-deadline fretting lurches toward its conclusion, one player who has some recent perspective on it is Alexei Ponikarovsky, who joined the Kings as a free agent last summer but who was part of a deadline deal last season, when he moved from Toronto to Pittsburgh. In the weeks prior to the deadline, the Maple Leafs had made little secret of their desire to move Ponikarovsky, but it can still be a dramatic event for players. After practice today, I asked Ponikarovsky for his thoughts on how difficult a trade can be on a player…

PONIKAROVSKY: “I wouldn’t call it dramatic. It’s a part of the job. You just have to accept it. It’s not something you can control. It’s not up to you what will happen. What you can control is how you play and what you bring to the table for the team to win. That’s all you can do, and the rest of it is up to the management. Yeah, I went through it last year. I would describe it as an experience. When you get traded for the first time, you go through some emotional stuff and you have to change some things and you go away from the family. But I think you just learn from that, and you accept it as part of your job and just go with it and go to the other team. Life goes on. You play with a different group of guys and, for sure, it’s a little bit different.”