At last week's trade deadline, the biggest deals in the Pacific Division came in San Jose and Dallas. Sharks GM Doug Wilson picked up right winger Bill Guerin and defenseman Craig Rivet, while Dallas GM Doug Armstrong pried a fixture out of L.A., in obtaining defenseman.

Anaheim's Brian Burke, meanwhile, was unable to parlay the first-round pick he had acquired from the Lightning to add a frontline scorer. Burke, who lamented the high cost of adding an impact player, had to settle for picking up tough guy Brad May from Colorado in exchange for goaltender Mike Wall. May's presence in Anaheim figures to make an already tough team even more difficult to play against.

By adding Rivet's reliable presence on the blue line and Guerin's 28 goals up front, San Jose clearly got better.

In Norstrom, the Stars got a lock-down defenseman and exemplary role model. Because Norstrom spent the bulk of his career in Los Angeles, he has no playoff experience beyond the second round, but he plays a playoff style of hockey all season and should make Dallas' second-ranked defense (2.34 goals allowed per game) even stingier.

Armstrong had already brought in a scorer, picking up Ladislav Nagy from Phoenix Feb. 12 in hopes of igniting his team's anemic offense. The imbalanced Stars are saddled with the NHL's 27th ranked offense (2.52 goals per game).

Nagy, however, has been slow to make impact with the Stars, picking up just one goal and one assist in his first nine games in Dallas.

Early returns are meaningless, of course, but when the division's two big trade deadline winners met Sunday in Dallas, the Sharks came away with an impressive 4-0 win.

Guerin, who at 36 is the oldest player on the Sharks' roster, logged 13:58 minutes of ice time without scoring for San Jose in Sunday's game. In three games since joining the Sharks, Guerin has yet to pick up a point while San Jose has gone 1-2. Norstrom, meanwhile, played just under 20 minutes, saying he was surprised at how comfortable he felt.

Rivet, who scored in his first game as a Shark, a 3-1 loss at Anaheim Friday, was on the ice for 22:12 in Sunday's win, and was a plus-1.

Armstrong gave up a pair of first-round picks to bring in Guerin and Rivet, creating a feeling that the Stars need to go on a postseason run to make the short-term gain outweigh the long-term pain.

While their closest competitors in the division improved, the Ducks, it would appear, went backward by standing still. Burke reportedly was unable to finalize a deal for the Islanders' Jason Blake (32 goals, 58 points) before the deadline, and the Ducks were widely regarded as trade-day losers.

In three games since the dealing stopped, however, Anaheim has gone 2-1, including impressive back-to-back home wins over league-leading Nashville and the Sharks.

Both San Jose and Dallas got better. But whether or not they did enough to overtake Anaheim - or beat them in a playoff series - remains to be seen.