travel_dude

Really? Speculation that we are trading one player counts?

Yeah, I out on this. Player's agents issuing press releases. Gang of 8 remain unnamed. The entire team painted a certain way. It's a tough situation, both to defend and to the possible outcomes for people involved. Innocent or guilty.

Barzal is not getting a deal from NY close to that. He's more of a playmaker than goal scorer. He has never managed more than 22 goals and that was also his best assist season at 63 assists. They offered a UFA with far better stats less than $9.5M, if at all. Back to the deal. Sounds like they get the short end, but a guy able to score 35 goal on a defensive system? Kylington gives them a solid LD that bumps down Aho. I would consider Zary, but let's not devalue Mangiapane that much. Just a trade thought. Gives them someone to replace Johnnie with on a top line. A playmaker we don't have.

I think his decision depends on what we are doing this year. He came to a team that struggled with consistency and had a lax attitude to competing. The team let those guys go. I think he was as fed up with JH as he was impressed. The team stuff that he did impressed. The one man stuff not so much. But it's hard to get a read on him. He was proud of the team. We decide to go into a rebuild, and I doubt he comes back. Too frustrating. You instill the ethic, but have to work on the new guys to get them to buy in. He only loved coaching the team when they were 100% bought in.

So, here's an off the wall thought. Tkachuk may have been holding off waiting to see how BT as going to handle Johnny Walkie. So far nothing to address it. Is that the sticking point? So, my solution is we trade for Barzal and sign Tkachuk. Mangiapane and Kylington goes to NYI. Barzal gets a bit less than we offered Gaudreau (8.5 - 9.0) Tkachuk signs long term for 9.0 Not as fun as looking at potential returns for Matty. But a lot more fun that watching a horrible trade happen and we are set back years.

I think the old guy might have something to say about paying Tkachuk any more than 8.5M. If anything, we should talk to them about Mangiapane for Barzal. We give up a 30+ goal guy, they give up a playmaking C He's not hit the heights one would have expected by nopw.

The unfortunate side effect of the Tkachuk situation is the unrelenting rumors about this team or that team offering players X and Y. Some of the funny ones are: Marner or Tavares plus Gio for MT (this one made me laugh) Kyrou + Krug + 1st for MT (they even suggested it was turned down) Not that I believe anything, but it's hard to tell with the lack of hockey analysts post FA day. They all went on vacation.

Fair criticism. We seem to have a lot of insight into why player X is not good. Dube has floated through the lineup and been called out by Sutter for needing to be much better. He scored 8 of his 18 goals in the last 10 games of the season. I keep waiting for him to break out.

Dube is coming off a season where he had a poor first 3/4 followed by a great quarter. I think the idea is to make the team better overall. One player alone makes just a little difference. ANA didn't feel he was worth $1.8M. Does that mean he isn't worth as much as Kevin Rooney?

Eric Francis picked up on this and now is saying the trade is coming this week. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. The owners probably said, do this now. Can't have the QO getting in the way. Try to get the deal done and if there is no movement, then make the trade. Personally, if he takes the award, then he is going to be less valuable next year, since he won't be hitting 100.

The arena is a big thing. No desire to resolve it. The border is something else. But I agree we have to get moving. The team selected arbitration plays it out too long. Other fish to fry. Not that we have missed out on that many top players but we have missed a few good ones. And we are not focused on trades, or so it seems. Walk and chew gum. Showing the players that we are doing things helps in their decision making.

Feasible in what way? We didn't have a high draft pick. He was ranked 9th best NA skater. Who were we trading to get to 4th overall? That's the question. Saying we could have is just hindsight. We trading Gaudreau coming out of the rebuild? Or staying in the rebuild and trading Dougie?

Tempe will have a new building in the next 2 years, or close to that.

I have been hoping we would be announcing that. Friedman suggested we had or should have some interest. I don't know if we are so hell bent on Tkachuk, that we have stopped looking to improve or what. On another note, it seems (rumor only) like the AVS are having trouble trading Compher or Girard. I don't see why that should be an issue, since it's not like JVR. If they can't do it, it puts Kadri out of reach. If the ask for Girard was reasonable, you have to jump on that. Compher is a pending UFA next summer. Have to be a bit more careful on him.

Tkachuk, Dube and Fox in 2016. Check. Hamilton traded for in 2016. Ras, Kyl and Mange in 2016. Check. Bennett in 2014. Check. That was Burke's draft. We hadn't solved the goalie issue, so it was not a complete rebuild. We got Ortio. Check. Failed to address the problem with goaltending. Check. Doesn't always come through a rebuild.

If it's ARI, then I would want Chychrun + Crouse. I am greedy. Losing a top scoring LW/RW for a potential #1D is fine, but think it's below value. If we dealt with NJ, I would want Hischier. Not our biggest need right now, but sets us up better for the future. If they want to manage the cap, then add in Johnsson or Tatar. Would NJ do either of these? No idea. We are swapping two top players. They seem intent on building on Hughes and Mercer.

You have a tail? I thought you lived in a nice area. Too close to Detroit nuke?

Kucherov and Vasilevskiy are just slightly below that magic number. TBL have 3 players making 9.5M and another one at 8.5M. Ovi and Sid are both players that were signed under the old rules that allowed you to sign long long deal and lower the AAV. We have nobody making that. Paying Gaudreau 10.5 would not have been the worst thing for us by itself. I'm not suggesting that he alone gets us the cup. What I am saying is that there are a bunch of players killing the cap instead of being used to improve the team. Defense is not the problem. Lower AAV centers is not the problem. Paying two players that were 4th liners is a huge problem. I'm not saying Gaudreau didn't leave for family related reasons; he for sure did. Maybe he also sees that the team is still in a rut. We can't get better this year with him on the team. We couldn't afford to stay the same, so it was only going to be internal improvements.

We picked 16th in the Makar draft. No way we were getting 4th overall.

Fox and Erixon wanted to play in NY, so that's just a factor of not being NY. Gaudreau is another issue and that happened somewhere in the last two years. It's easy to use family as the excuse. And it may be 90% of the reason, but it's just his wife didn't want to be in Calgary. Canada is still somewhat isolated from the US. We have changing entry requirements. We had been blocked from non Canadians from entering the country. The risk of that coming back is still there. No this isn't a COVID rant. We have to remember that some American born players do not want to live their lives in Canada. We have to get the arena resolved. It's outdated. How much it plays into the players decisions isn't really known, but it's nothing to be proud of.

Just going to focus on this part here. Every team that wins (maybe one or two anomolies) has luck riding on it. STL got a hot goalie at the right times, after almosy selling off. COL got Makar and managed to get rid of Barrie for a pleyer that helped them, plus puick up Nichushkin for a song. As well as making a few timely additions at TDL. How many times did they get the goalie they thought was it? Just happened to get one to get them to the finals and it was less critical then. TBL won two cups in qhat could only be described as abnormal seasons. Managed to have Kucherov on the bench for the first one until the playoffs. My point is that teams that win these days have to have something go extremely right. Saros being injured just before the playoffs killed any chance they had of beating or slowing down COL. The Flames losing a top 4D and Zaddy breaking his ribs, among other things. We looked like crap against EDM, but should have had their number. There are things to be said, like Johnny was never going to be able to show the heart that a player like Point or Kadri showed. He's an amazing talent, but he is a 180 foot player. Doesn't attack the net directly and doesn't defent the last 10 feet.

All in all, we are left again wondering whether a player will be here the end of next year. This is not quite the same as last summer with Gaudreau, but it's not that far off. The difference is if we can't work a deal, we have to trade him. Mange is a little more promising. He shouldn't be as difficult to sign if we are willing to pay him the going rate. Kylington is less of a risk because we won't be walking him to UFA. He gets a reasonable award or a deal from us. Or we trade him.

They must have been concerned about the QO to decide this. I get this gives them more time without fear of a OS being signed. But was any team goiing to offer something higher than $9M x 5? 5 years the max for averagng, so anything longer is more expensive. Anyway, it's interesting to say the least.

I think he would sign tomorrow for 6. Less than that and he might be a bit of a holdout.

Well, he's no Kenny Capmaster Holland, that's for sure. Just saying that we ended up offering that much this year anyway, more actually. Perhaps you say 9.5M and he says "start the car". If the final offer before he shut it down was 7.5M, then he would be dumb to accept that. It really makes no matter. He wasn't signed last year and walked this year. He may have had the same opinion last year, though he may have been less down on the city/country then. Best summer ever might have made him feel at home. The two wild card factors that we couldn't do anything about this year were: 1) not resolving the arena issue (that came later but who knows) 2) Canada COVID rules; inability to travel freely between countries