Speculation: 2024-2025 General Discussion III: We’re back! Kind of.

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Admittedly I haven’t watched much NJ hockey lately, so I don’t know if he’s completely useless now, but we are talking about bringing Gourde back for a similar price. Getting Palat with the added value of getting rid of Sheary seems like similar move.
 
This is all hypothetical, but Sheary is costing $850k against the cap, even though he's in Syracuse.

50% of Palat's contract would be $3 million AAV, so we'd only be adding 2.150m in cap.

And if Pally falls off, we could probably still trade him for more than 2025 Conor Sheary.


It'd make more sense for NJ to trade him for future considerations or some 7th round pick than take on Sheary's contract.
 
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For Palat to come back, that'd be a pipe dream because you'd have a forechecking beast in the bottom six. Pally was an incredibly high IQ forward. Him over Girgensons or whoever on the left in the bottom six is a huge upgrade.

It would certainly have to be for the right price.
 
Tampa currently has 9.1 available heading into next season with 9F, 6D, 1G. If they can get Gourde around 3 and a backup around a million and move Sheary, they'll have ~6 million left to sign 3F and 1D most likely. If Goncalves and at least one of Geekie or Howard get regular spots, that's another 1.8-2.1 million, so they'll have 4 million ish for a forward and a dman to roll with 22. Maybe they bring Glendening back or a 2nd highly ranked prospect makes the team, but it looks like Tampa will have in that 3 million range to likely either go after a ufa forward or dman. If it doesn't work with Gourde in terms of re-signing, they could then spend roughly 4 million or so on an additional middle 6 F or 4/5 dman.
 
Big fan of Palat but he is on the cusp of 34yo and 1000 games (including playoffs), tons of hard miles on him with his playstyle. Hasn't even been .5ppg in any season with NJ.

Sure I'd take him back I guess, but would have to be at a discount. I expect us to be exposed heavily this postseason in the physical game/punishment/grit/size and all that, so I just don't see him fulfilling a key role like he used to and he doesn't fill a missing gap. I will always have a soft spot for him though.
 
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I would actually call up S.J. and see if Ferraro is available before the draft. Tampa should be able to afford him, and he'd help solidify the defense for next season. They could spend less on defense and use that money on a forward, but the only likely available forward spots will be an opening on the 4th line really (unless Gourde doesn't re-sign). They could look at players like Frederic, Kiviranta, Brazeau, Saad, Tanev, Iafallo, Nosek, Gaudette etc. There will be no shortage of forwards available for a bottom 6 role should JBB look to use the space there.
 
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Big fan of Palat but he is on the cusp of 34yo and 1000 games (including playoffs), tons of hard miles on him with his playstyle. Hasn't even been .5ppg in any season with NJ.

Sure I'd take him back I guess, but would have to be at a discount. I expect us to be exposed heavily this postseason in the physical game/punishment/grit/size and all that, so I just don't see him fulfilling a key role like he used to and he doesn't fill a missing gap. I will always have a soft spot for him though.
While true, he's an absolute ideal fit in the bottom six. He played a heavier game and won puck battles, something a lot of guys in our bottom six dont do enough of. I'm with you, thats a tough retread because of the mileage but if he was at 3M/yr, I'd definitely bring him back. 10-14mins a night, kill penalties... maybe 15g/15a...
 
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While true, he's an absolute ideal fit in the bottom six. He played a heavier game and won puck battles, something a lot of guys in our bottom six dont do enough of. I'm with you, thats a tough retread because of the mileage but if he was at 3M/yr, I'd definitely bring him back. 10-14mins a night, kill penalties... maybe 15g/15a...

Perfectly sums up my thoughts, I think the same concerns for Palats health could be applied to Gourde but I haven’t seen those voiced.

I don’t value paying so much for depth unlike some here and apparently JBB, but he would be amongst the more effective third liners in the league when healthy if that is what we are aiming for. I would much, much rather get a top 6 guy and push Paul down to the third line.
 
The saga was cataloged on HF's discord, but here's an explanation.
Viqsi

Today at 5:43 PM
A simpler explanation for the less tech savvy (as written by Hatterson):

HF needed to restore from a backup.

When they went to do this they found out that the backup was incomplete, a bunch of data was missing from it.

They have an old backup but that’s from a year ago so doesn’t have any data that’s changed in the last year (new posts, new users, account changes, etc)

Some of that data from the last year can be manually recovered because they happened to have a sort of copy of it in a different format, but that’s not ideal and takes a lot of manual work.

Live Solar Bears game stream in the prospects thread, btw.
 
Perfectly sums up my thoughts, I think the same concerns for Palats health could be applied to Gourde but I haven’t seen those voiced.

I don’t value paying so much for depth unlike some here and apparently JBB, but he would be amongst the more effective third liners in the league when healthy if that is what we are aiming for. I would much, much rather get a top 6 guy and push Paul down to the third line.
If Cooper deployed them right, imo, the team should already have 2 strong top 6 lines. Point, Kuch, Guentzel, Hagel, Cirelli, and Bjorkstrand should be the top 6 in some combo next year (and the rest if this year). They could add a 3rd liner to go with Paul and Gourde, or if Goncalves continues to improve and impress, pkay him there (or shuffle between him ans Chaffee). If one of Geekie or Howard does make the team (or if it's one of Finley, Duke etc), there's another spot. The question is 4C and maybe a 4th line wing, as do they bring back Glendening again, move Gourde down to 4C, give a prospect a shot there like Finley, or sign someone new for cheap? I think they will re-sign Gourde for around 3-3.5, call up at least one of the Crunch guys, re-sign Goncalves, a.cheaper backup G, whomever that will be, and then likely split the remaining 3.5-4 between a 6/7 dman and a 4th line F who could probably play up on the 3rd line if needed.
 
Days and I are not able to post new threads right now. We could use the Philly GDT for tonight’s game, it only has one reply anyway. Or maybe somebody else manages to create a GDT for tonight. It’s messy.
 

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