Fowler and Leddy are very comparable, though. Fowler doesn't need to get re-signed like Leddy did, true, but Lindholm does (+ a couple more players) and his contract's gonna be bigger than Leddy's.
Plus, you're a budget team, so spending dead money and cap space on a buyout might not be in your owner's interest.
Bieksa isn't waiving to go to BUF or any of the teams that could afford to take him. If Bieksa refuses to waive his NTC next year, we'll have no option but to buy him out. We need that protection spot for Lindholm, Vatanen and Manson.
Stoner averaged 15:21 TOI in 50 games played last year. He averaged 17:38 TOI the year before in Anaheim.
He's never played 70 games in a season.
Stoner is a vastly overpaid 6th/7th defenseman.
Stoner's TOI dropped this passed season because of the emergence of Manson and the fact that Bieksa is too highly paid to not play and is RH. Personally, I'd play Stoner over Bieksa everyday.
Stoner is overpaid, but it depends what you mean by vastly. Go back to the 2014-15 season and at 3.25M for a guy doing on average 17.38 in TOI a night, I wouldn't say he's that overpaid. Maybe 0.5M for what he brings. Bring it forward to this year and he's probably closer to 1M over paid. Now that's quite substantial. Nevertheless, Stoner is still a useful player. He's a Grossman/Meszaros type player. Mostly here for his big body, ability to block shots and hitting. The good thing about Stoner is he knows his limitations. He's also a great PKer. Some people are quick to dump on him, but most Duck fans would gladly keep him and move Bieksa if that was an option.
It's obvious that Ducks fans want nothing to do with the 3 forwards that Sabres fans will offer up in a Fowler deal (Kane, Ennis, and Girgensons), so I don't know why Sabres fans even bother to ask.
Personally, I think Tim Murray has moved on from looking for a LHD after the Kulikov deal.
And after what he gave up to land Kulikov, I can't see him paying a lot more for a similar defenseman with one more year on his contract.
Agree with all this. I think TM was done after the Kulikov trade and us Duck fans have already had the pleasure of hearing how he's so much better then Fowler anyway.