Proposal: Are there teams willing to take on Elvis Merzlikins contract ?

[Xoggz22]

As a Vancouver fan I would take him and give you Demko, but I want the third back and I would like to expand the trade to Jiricek

Miller, Demko, Rathbone

Merzlikins, Roslovic, 3OA, Jirick

I want what you're smoking. Makes zero sense for Columbus. We don't want Miller and the 3OA and Jiricek are not available. This is terrible

A first line Center, a top goalie and a B prospect and taking on a significant cap dump.

I would challenge you to find a deal that would turn the blue jackets into a playoff team quicker and clean up the cap for them. They ain’t getting that for cheap and they have an abundance of prospects.

Clean up what CAP? we have $12MM in space and no key UFA or RFA. Terrible deal.

 

[Xoggz22]

CBJ will not move Elvis this year. They have to at least give him a chance with a new coaching staff and new goalie coach. He has the skills but between the ears has been a problem for him. We'll have to be in wait and see mode. The problem in Columbus is the expected backup (Tarasov) has very little experience (lots of promise) due to several injuries. He's not waiver exempt so they are in a tough spot in net.

 

[bernmeister]

R's cannot easily offer help here, even if you make it profitable enuf.

But if forced to connect enuf dots, this is theoretically possible, even if not readily doable.

1. NY would need to have a suitor take Panarin and most of his $$$, for reasons understood with follow through below. Could be Nashville, St. Louis, MAYBE Ana, but wherev bread has full nmc and will have to approve.

2. Assuming #1 above, if CBJ gives him at half, reducing $5.4m cap hit until 2027 to 2.7 per, then we can take
X ___________ + Elivs at half
for
Lindbom [a 2nd round mid 30s G selection, started late w/us and is behind Garand + others on the depth chart]

The X _______________ has to be significant.

3. While recovering some of bread's 11+ cap hit will cover X ___________, t will not cover also adding Elvis' cap hit.
For that, CBJ must do 2024 1st (top 10 protected) for Lindgren [1 yr at 3 per, but reasonably likely to extend]

-------------
If Elvis had/still has any NHL level ability, our G guru, coach Benoit Allaire, is a good bet to get it. And we can send him to the A, or loan him out, whatever is best, for duration of his contract. But we would need SIGNIF return to add that much cap.

If bread wished to return, that could be a discussion, but not seeing it.

 

[thebus88]

I haven't bought this goalie since day one. I was never sold on him.

Lets in some of the weakest, softest, nastiest goals I've seen. He's been doing it since he entered the league. I've given him a lot of the softy of the night's when he's been in action. And I've named him Elvis the king of softies MerzLEAKins because of it.

His rookie year started poorly from what I remember, then he got kind of hot maybe around the start of the 2020 calendar year? He had a bunch of shutouts in a really short stretch and that wound up boosting him and he finish the season having a pretty good year. Somehow and I don't remember the circumstances, it was Korpisalo that was the playoff goalie that year. I thought he overachieved that year and maybe even the year after.

He may have underachieved this past year by a whole lot too. I doubt he'll be THAT bad next year, but he may not be particularly good ever again or at least not consistent. He may have good years, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's peaked.

Some people have cited what happened with Kivlenieks resulting in his downfall, but he was okay in 21-22, the season after the tragic death of Kivlenieks. He played okay that year. I remember he started out meh, but after Korpisalo got injured he played almost every game the rest of the year and finished off strong.

I know his grandmother was ill and he traveled back home to be with her and from what I understand, he didn't make it before she passed. The story was heartbreaking to me and I don't even wanna read it again, as it hit close to home with me, someone who was very close with their grandmother. I can't blame him for not playing well while that was going on, but he was playing pretty poorly from the start of the season.

His contract was definitely overpayment from the start, but not as much as Petersen's, if only because he had a couple of good seasons and as a starting goalie. Petersen's good seasons were as a sparsely used backup on a team that just absolutely refused to let him usurp a washed up Jonathan Quick until they gave him that new deal and he was BAD while doing it. And he was also extended an entire year before that deal started, so he was playing abysmally before that deal even began.

So I understand the Merzlikins contract MUCH more than Petersen's, which I can't at all rationalize.

Yeah. He's certainly had some pretty tumultuous stuff going on around him. It's not hard to see how he might be a little bit distracted, and even how Columbus might not be the right place for him to bounce back. He might need a fresh start. But even when he was at his "peak", there was something not entirely convincing about his play.

I think Columbus are pretty much stuck with bringing him back for at least another year and seeing if he can rebound at all though. They've made a lot of changes, with a new coach, new goalie coach, should have a better/healthier defence in front of him. I don't think he'll ever play up to that one really huge hot streak he had again, but if he can't improve to provide at least average goaltending next year with all those changes...Columbus are going to have some really difficult decisions to make in how to proceed.

It's risky though, when you're making big moves to take a step forward the way Columbus has...to hinge the entire fate of your season on this guy rebounding. I think they also have to find a way to bring in a "backup" who can take over if Merzlikins continues to falter.


I was musing for a second about whether there'd be some way of adding a significant + to swap him for Gibson. But i was reminded here that Merzlikins contract doesn't end until 2027. Not that Gibson's deal is any cheaper or shorter...but even if Gibson doesn't improve...he's still at least a serviceable NHL starter even behind the worst defensive team in history basically. Merzlikins isn't that right now. He's a complete mess. If the contract was shorter, maybe the Ducks could afford to have it on the books for a couple years while they're still working to turn things around. But all those extra years...that's just a huge liability that would stretch all the way into those years they're surely hoping to be making strides. Can't have that.


Bad goalie contracts are the worst. At least bad Forward/Defenceman contracts, you can just kinda bury them down the depth chart and ride it out. When one of your 2 goaltender spots is used on an expensive barely NHL caliber goaltender...what are you supposed to do with that? You have to get major overperformance out of the other guy somehow to make it work. Which is basically why i don't know if you can swap that Merzlikins contract for anything other than a different bad goalie contract in a rearranging of deck chairs on the Titanic sort of exercise.

He's at least shown more than Cal Petersen. But i don't see this contract being any cheaper or easier to pay to dump on somebody. More expensive probably, with that term remaining. That's too many years even for rebuilding teams to ride out.

Anyone can search my posts from the very beginning regarding Merzlikins/Korpisalo.

The situation regarding Kivlenieks is terrible and obviously did/will impact him negatively, but, that is not the reason he is “now” bad. He has ALWAYS been terrible. Angles, crease control, rebound control, puck playing ability, not to mention all the “mental”/“diva” aspects. All issues.

The VAST majority of CBJ/NHL fans bought into the hype after that UNSUSTAINABLE shutout “streak”, when the team had changed into an overly defensive style in order to protect Merzlikins, similar to Ken Hitchcock and Steve Mason (and his insane SO streak) of the past. I’ve tried to always point out what his numbers would have looked like with a more “realistic” SO number from that year. And yes, many forget that Torts made the CORRECT decision, and Korpisalo was chosen as the playoff starter.

What I honestly don’t understand is how a NHL front office could have watched this guy play consistently over a couple/few years and give him that contract they did. I would do almost anything to remove him from the CBJ, as I would have 2-3 years ago. It’s fascinating to think what they maybe could have traded him for at his highest PERCEIVED value, and kept Korpisalo.

Sincerely, long time Elvis Merzlikins “hater”.

 

[Djp]

If Petersen just cost Grans and a 2nd to dump, while the Kings were also effectively retaining $2 million on his deal, I feel like the cost here would be even bigger.

It’s also bizarre to think about how many bad goalie contracts are in the NHL right now.

Double thee time, double the price

 

[Bleedred]

Anyone can search my posts from the very beginning regarding Merzlikins/Korpisalo.

The situation regarding Kivlenieks is terrible and obviously did/will impact him negatively, but, that is not the reason he is “now” bad. He has ALWAYS been terrible. Angles, crease control, rebound control, puck playing ability, not to mention all the “mental”/“diva” aspects. All issues.

The VAST majority of CBJ/NHL fans bought into the hype after that UNSUSTAINABLE shutout “streak”, when the team had changed into an overly defensive style in order to protect Merzlikins, similar to Ken Hitchcock and Steve Mason (and his insane SO streak) of the past. I’ve tried to always point out what his numbers would have looked like with a more “realistic” SO number from that year. And yes, many forget that Torts made the CORRECT decision, and Korpisalo was chosen as the playoff starter.

What I honestly don’t understand is how a NHL front office could have watched this guy play consistently over a couple/few years and give him that contract they did. I would do almost anything to remove him from the CBJ, as I would have 2-3 years ago. It’s fascinating to think what they maybe could have traded him for at his highest PERCEIVED value, and kept Korpisalo.

Sincerely, long time Elvis Merzlikins “hater”.

Yes, his angles are terrible. He lets in a lot of LEAKY goals (that's why I call him MerzLEAKins) that go through him and from horrible angles. I'd have to go back through my logs (threads on the Devils forum) to look at all of his softy of the night goals that I gave him.

I remember one of his first games in the league in the regular season, it may have even been the first. He let in a horrible goal and I was like ''What the f*** dude? They didn't have somebody a little better than this in their plans after Bob left?''. It was unbelievably bad and not even like fluky bad, like a goal from center ice or the blue line, but just really like one of the more shots he probably faced that game. I think the guys on one of the networks were even talking about how they didn't buy him. That one sticks out because that was my introduction to him. I had never heard of him before that as he wasn't in the NHL or even North America if I recall correctly. I wish I could tell you who scored that goal or what team it was against. Since I have nothing better to do right now, I should look up his game log from 19-20 and watch highlights of the first few games. Maybe I won't get past 1 or 2 before I recognize. And I'm pretty sure most of the goals he gave up that game were bad.

Koskinen was the same way. One of my frequent lines regarding Merzlikins was that he gives up some of the softest, lousiest goals east of Koskinen.

 

[Bleedred]

Anyone can search my posts from the very beginning regarding Merzlikins/Korpisalo.

The situation regarding Kivlenieks is terrible and obviously did/will impact him negatively, but, that is not the reason he is “now” bad. He has ALWAYS been terrible. Angles, crease control, rebound control, puck playing ability, not to mention all the “mental”/“diva” aspects. All issues.

The VAST majority of CBJ/NHL fans bought into the hype after that UNSUSTAINABLE shutout “streak”, when the team had changed into an overly defensive style in order to protect Merzlikins, similar to Ken Hitchcock and Steve Mason (and his insane SO streak) of the past. I’ve tried to always point out what his numbers would have looked like with a more “realistic” SO number from that year. And yes, many forget that Torts made the CORRECT decision, and Korpisalo was chosen as the playoff starter.

What I honestly don’t understand is how a NHL front office could have watched this guy play consistently over a couple/few years and give him that contract they did. I would do almost anything to remove him from the CBJ, as I would have 2-3 years ago. It’s fascinating to think what they maybe could have traded him for at his highest PERCEIVED value, and kept Korpisalo.

Sincerely, long time Elvis Merzlikins “hater”.

Here ya go



The really bad goal (there were 4 that were at least stoppable at best and 2 or 3 were horrific) was the Marcus Pettersson goal, the second goal scored on him. The third goal was at least as bad as the second. The Pettersson goal goes squeaks in and goes off his glove arm and in and the shot was horrible. It wasn't even a good shot, it wasn't quick at all, it wasn't one timed.

The third and fourth goals were both from McCann I think and the third goal was probably as bad as the second goal, except that one squeaks in and goes off his blocker arm. Then the fourth McCann beats him blocker side again and that's a stoppable goal too, but at least it didn't go through him like the two goals before that.

And then goal 7 was also not good. Teddy Blueger wires one past his glove from distance.

There were a couple where guys were right in front of him, like on the Johnson goal, which was the first goal against and and then I think on the sixth goal against.

That was indeed his NHL regular season debut.

And this game only sticks out because I had never heard of the guy before. I remember thinking in the offseason when they didn't sign or trade for anybody else, ''What's Columbus doing in goal to replace Bob?'' and I remember seeing ''Some guy named Elvis'. So that was my introduction to him.

 

[Dead Coyote]

Vejmelka for Elvis + 1st?

EDIT: Didn't realize #22 was gone. If '24 is available I'd do that or multiple 2nds/prospects.

 

[ViD]

Vejmelka for Elvis + 1st?

EDIT: Didn't realize #22 was gone. If '24 is available I'd do that or multiple 2nds/prospects.

That was my proposal for retained Gibson when we still had the 22nd pick

 

[oceanchild]

I want what you're smoking. Makes zero sense for Columbus. We don't want Miller and the 3OA and Jiricek are not available. This is terrible


Clean up what CAP? we have $12MM in space and no key UFA or RFA. Terrible deal.

You won’t if you acquire a starting goaltender and a first line Center. You would have significant cap space, and if you think cap space isn’t a concern why did Columbus pay to have some cap retained during the trade it just made.

 

[oceanchild]

We. don’t. want. Miller.

Anyways, can’t dump Elvis this off-season. Don’t think it’ll be worth the price. Just gotta hope he bounces back somehow.

You may not want Miller, but does your GM not want a Center who is 7th in scoring (Centers) over the last 3 years and 6th over the last 2 years or 15th for all forwards for both those timelines (4 spots and 11 points behind Gaudereau in last 3 years) or 15th and 8 points over the last 2 years behind the guy you signed for almost $2M more per and isn’t physical or play a premium position. I’m not so sure that a GM trying to keep his job might not have a different view

 

[KevinRedkey]

I would potentially consider Elvis if he was attached to Laine in a DeBrincat deal, but I doubt Debrincat has Columbus on his list.

 

[67 others]

$5.4m cap hit until 2027.

Sadly, I’m not sure Elvis can rebound in Columbus, he seems to be emotionally fragile and recently even deleted his twitter because of some fans taunting him. He likely needs a change of scenery.

I guess Columbus might be willing to take another “bad” contract back and add a prospect or a pick to sweeten the deal.

Tomas Hertl 40% retained for Elvis, Cole Sillinger and Columbus' 3rd overall

 

[Viqsi]

You may not want Miller, but

Post stopped being relevant here. Miller is of zero interest here.

 

[DatDude44]

Maybe winnipeg would give him a shot if they move hellebuyck? Apparently they aren't looking torebuild, moreso re-tool.

 

[oceanchild]

Post stopped being relevant here. Miller is of zero interest here.

Haha, I’m just watching your GM go nuts trying to save his job and just waiting for the shoe to drop.

 

[Poppy Whoa Sonnet]

CBJ will not move Elvis this year. They have to at least give him a chance with a new coaching staff and new goalie coach. He has the skills but between the ears has been a problem for him. We'll have to be in wait and see mode. The problem in Columbus is the expected backup (Tarasov) has very little experience (lots of promise) due to several injuries. He's not waiver exempt so they are in a tough spot in net.

Didn’t know Tarasov isn’t waiver exempt.

Seems like they have to go with those two then and waive Elvis if he doesn’t come back to form. Going with three goalies would be unideal as well.

 

[Viqsi]

Haha, I’m just watching your GM go nuts trying to save his job and just waiting for the shoe to drop.

Is that what you think is happening? Interesting.

 

[oceanchild]

Is that what you think is happening? Interesting.

I do, paid to hold back cap, just signed an 8 year contract with a 29 year old defensemen. It’s been a discussion with the talking heads for a bit anyhow. It appears he is on thin ice.

 

[Viqsi]

I do, paid to hold back cap, just signed an 8 year contract with a 29 year old defensemen. It’s been a discussion with the talking heads for a bit anyhow. It appears he is on thin ice.

So that's how you gather information on the Jackets. No wonder you still think JT Miller is viable as a proposal option. It's starting to make sense now.

 

[herzausstein]

I know Columbus will say no, but id do saros for elvis + 2023 1st (3rd overall)

 

[Gocanes0506]

its buyout for Elvis if you to move him. CBJ isnt going to want to pay to dump that contract.

 

[Viqsi]

I know Columbus will say no, but id do saros for elvis + 2023 1st (3rd overall)

Yeah, the 3rd overall is going nowhere.

No matter how much I love Saros.

 

[GhostfaceWu]

Hell cost the same as campbell to move

 

[oceanchild]

So that's how you gather information on the Jackets. No wonder you still think JT Miller is viable as a proposal option. It's starting to make sense now.

That and the team has no number one Center, they don’t grow in trees, none are available via free agency, and the GM is clearly in win now mode.

So that's how you gather information on the Jackets. No wonder you still think JT Miller is viable as a proposal option. It's starting to make sense now.

Perhaps you can send me the quote from someone in the organization that confirms that he isn’t “viable” or describes something that supports what your opinion is.