It should be a banner week for those who enjoy arcane mathematics along with their playoff pushes, because the books are getting hot in the sporting world this week. March 1st could be a rager!

Wednesday is the NHL trading deadline. Now, there are roughly 25 teams in playoff-spot contention. Some teams, like Arizona and Tampa, have quietly given up, hoping that being sellers on the trade market will pay them dividends down the road. Others, like the Canucks, are so disease-ridden that whomever they have available won’t be useful to the new team for a couple of weeks.

Yet a scant two hours after I typed that, they went and traded one of their few remaining stars. Alexandre Burrows is now an Ottawa Senator, and in exchange for Ottawa’s first pick from 2016, Jonathan Dahlen. I hope the Swedish medical system gave this kid all his shots. So the Canucks have written off the rest of the season and are now in rebuild mode (a-fucking-gain). That’s how quickly things change.

It’s hard to say what will go down by Wednesday. It could be a dud, like the NBA deadline, or some teams might mortgage the future on a magical run. It also depends on how much cap space teams have, and whether they can afford the cost of the rental.

The Canucks, most likely, are waiting for their polio boosters before engaging the rest of market.

In the NFL, it’s tagging season. Teams have until March 1 at 4:00 PM Eastern to tag a player as a “franchise player”. To explain the concept further, allow me to quote nfl.com:

NFL clubs have three options when it comes to flexing their tag muscle: 1) Non-exclusive franchise tag, 2) Exclusive franchise tag, 3) Transition tag.

Players under the designation have until 4 p.m. EDT on July 15 negotiate a multiyear contract with the team. After this date, the player may sign only a one-year contract with his prior club for the 2017 season, and the contract cannot be extended until after the club’s last regular-season game.

The most common tag is the “non-exclusive” tag. It is a one-year tender offer to a player for an amount no less than the average of the top five salaries at the player’s position over the last five years, or 120 percent of the player’s previous salary, whichever is greater. It’s why Kirk Cousins got so much money last season. (And why he’s apparently trade-bait now.) (Oh God, the Niners are the preferred destination.) The player can talk to other teams, and the current team has the right to match the offer or be provided two compensatory first-round picks if the player departs.

The “exclusive” tag restricts the player’s options but increases their compensation, and the “transition” tag means the player is given an average of the top-10 salaries, and the team receives no compensation if the player signs elsewhere.

To date, the highest-profile player to be tagged is Le’Veon Bell of the Steelers, meaning that if they don’t work out a deal, he’ll be playing for a tad over $12 million in 2017.

It should be a fun couple of days.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL:
  • Kings at Wild – 8:00PM | NBCSN
• NBA:
  • Raptors at Knicks – 7:00PM | TSN
  • Bucks at Cavaliers – 7:00PM | TNT
  • Pacers at Rockets – 9:30PM | TNT / TSN

• NCAA:
  • U*NC at Virginia – 7:00PM | ESPN
  • West Virginia at Baylor – 7:00PM | ESPNU
  • Oklahoma at Kansas – 9:00PM | ESPN

• WWE: Monday Night Raw – 8:00PM | USA
  • from Green Bay!
  • the “go-home” show before the “Fastlane” event this Sunday.

The worst part of Spring Training, especially this early, is that (local) networks with broadcast rights start showing games instead of actual, more competitive sporting contests. Tonight, for example, a Blue Jays split-squad is playing a Pirates split-squad across the Sportsnet network, except in Quebec where they get Habs-Devils instead. MAYBE THIS IS WHY RATINGS SUCK?!