No it's not a basis, you are not remotely close on your evaluations of these players. Nobody is going to trade a perennial superstar for a handful of 2nd liners and over the hill vets. You are asking for someone who has a very good chance of being a top 5-10 player in the league in their prime, you don't get to make an "untouchables" list.
It’s a bit tricky to use the Lindros trade as a basis for comparison when it was a totally different era of hockey, but it’s not as though there are many examples of this type of thing ever happening. Doesn’t mean it hasn’t, and doesn’t mean it can’t.
You use the argument that Hextall was a Vezina winner, and that is technically true, but it was his rookie season where he still posted a 3.00 and a .902, and he never came close to replicating even those gaudy numbers again until towards the end of his career (weirdly enough) when he randomly led the league twice in GAA. I tried to counter that by including Coleman for the pedigree of having two Stanley Cups on his resume. Of which Hextall had exactly zero.
We don’t have anywhere close to a Forsberg on our roster (besides maybe Parekh) so we’d have to compensate another way. I thought Honzek because he’s our highest draft pedigree who hasn’t yet played whose name isn’t Parekh. Even Coronato isn’t a Forsberg, but he at least has a higher draft pedigree than Honzek and is already a 20 goal scorer in the NHL. So instead of Honzek we’d probably have to include Coro + another decent somewhat established young player or prospect, of which we have several.
Ricci had a .664 PPG in his first two seasons and Zary is sitting at .53. Ricci never came close to that PPG he hit in his first season with the Nords, it’s not like they would have known what kind of player he’d pan out to be, but just watching Zary I’d bet on him being much better than the .5 and change he’s been thus far.
Kerry Huffman was a 24 year old dman with 23 and 32 point seasons under his belt, who bounced back and forth between Hershey and Philly to that point early in his career. His last year in the OHL he had 35 points in 44 games. Brzu had 92 in 67 a year after posting up 57 in 68. You’re going to tell me that’s not a comparable?
No disrespect to the memory of Chris Simon, but regardless of where he was drafted (#25 is a bit misleading, it was still 2nd round), was a goon. Albeit a goon who managed to score 29 goals one season, but a goon nonetheless. Sharan already has seasons of 24 and 31 goals under his belt two years younger than Simon was at the time of his single 29-goal outlier.
If the Flames have a fire sale and bottom out next season but fall short of 1st overall, they could very well still end up with a top-five pick. If we managed to move Raz for another 2026 1st, we’d have three to include in a deal whereas Philly only included two, and they were in separate drafts.
I never said a potential deal for that 1st overall pick wouldn’t need work. But to suggest that it’s not possible when we are probably one of the only teams in the league who could actually pull it off is asinine. If I’m Conny with say, the 5th overall pick and go up to the GM holding the 1st overall to say, all three of our 1sts in this draft, and any players or prospects you want from our roster basically not named Wolf or Parekh, I have no doubt in my mind that I’m leaving with that 1st overall.
