Confirmed with Link: CDH and Saarela to CHI for Forsling and Anton Forsberg

[Chrispy]

Serious question, if our two trades had been made in reverse order, would we feel any differently?

So, first we trade de Haan/Saarela for Forsberg/Forsling. Then we get Marleau, a first and a seventh from Toronto for a sixth-rounder.

Would it make more sense? Be any better? I know it's hard to think this way, but try?

No, it's still a terrible return for de Haan.

The only way you can argue it isn't is if it's a true 3-way trade. There's nothing that says this deal needed to be the one made to unload de Haan.

 

[tarheelhockey]

IMO, Canes fans are going to feel a lot better about this when the reality of CDH’s injury situation plays out over the next year or two.

Trades like this don’t happen without a seriously compelling reason. CDH certainly didn’t play his way off the roster, he was well liked, and his contract wasn’t something that just HAD to be moved. This deal doesn’t make any sense as a hockey trade and little sense as a financial move. Granted, there’s the possibility that another move could be coming... if that’s the case then i guess we’ll find out later.

But IMO the far more likely thing is that his medical report showed a problematically high likelihood of re-injury. Perhaps even something that will soon lead to a buyout. The Hawks aren’t stupid, they see that information as well and aren’t going to pay full market value for damaged goods. That’s the only reasonable explanation I can see for the specific pieces being moved in this trade — we took an almost token return from the Hawks in exchange for a decent prospect, and that they absorb a large amount of risk on a seriously injured CDH. This is basically the same rationale that led to the Bickell/TT trade going the other way (and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same 2 organizations were involved in deals that involve the same principles).

If that turns out to be a correct reading, I will hate this trade on an emotional level but it’s easily the right thing to do. We don’t need a guy with a glass shoulder and a huge cap hit giving us the Tuomo Ruutu “will he play this month?” drama for the next 3 seasons.

 

[SaskCanesFan]

Because I don’t think it’s as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be? It’s a lottery protected pick of a team that’s (at the very least) expected to make the playoffs this upcoming year.

The Leafs picked 22nd this year (or would have, had they had the pick). Let’s assume they’re in that low 20s range next year as well. So we draft a young prospect that may or may not contribute to the team 3-5 years down the line.

And that’s fine and dandy, and I’m all for nabbing as many of those as we can, but I’m kind of tired of being excited for the future. I’d much rather be excited for the present, and this offseason has made that kind of difficult.

The funniest part about it to me, is that trading a good current NHLer for a pick 3-4 years away, is the type of move that Francis got *skewered* for making. But with this management it's brilliant

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

Marleau's buyout is worth $3.83 mil. de Haan was owed $14.2 mil over the final 3 years of his deal. Think of it this way:

de Haan (27% retained) + Saarela + 6th for Conditional 2020 1st + 2020 7th + Forsling + Forsberg

 

[SaskCanesFan]

No, those players are harder to find *outside the top 10.*

You just don't understand what the analytics say about drafting. Yes, the "scoring areas" get smaller as you get deeper into the draft. But it does so *very* slowly. The big dropoffs are at the top of the first round. Once you get into the 25-to-200 range, the dropoff from pick-to-pick is tiny, so more darts is the way to go.

Alternatively, you can understand the analytics perfectly, and still realize that they can be completely wrong in specific circumstances. I'd think fans of the team who consistently won Corsi without winning games, and who's 1C came from the 2nd round would understand that better than anyone.

It comes down to scouting. If you have 8 guys you consider to be in the same tier, then trading down 8 spots to get another asset makes sense. But if you're wrong and another team sees 1 of those 8 as much better than the rest, trading up makes just as much sense.

 

[DougieSmash]

What I hate the most about this is that DeHaan was big time into the area, he was great leader in the room. Typical Canes player. On other hand, i'd trade DeHaan, who probably is one injury away from stop being NHL player, much before i'd trade Hamilton and Faulk for mediocre player and 2nd round picks.

Not to mention Bean is almost close for the show, Sellgren is really talented. Forsling is former good prospect, so is Forsberg. Not great package but maybe Tulsky sees some value in those kids.

 

[SaskCanesFan]

How about being excited for the recent past, in which we made it to the ECF in our first full rebuilding year *and* won our first ever Calder Cup, brought to you by the exact same people who are making these deals right now?

Oh come on, the Calder Cup team was not brought to anyone by this current management. That team was built by Francis but you can't stomach to give credit.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The funniest part about it to me, is that trading a good current NHLer for a pick 3-4 years away, is the type of move that Francis got *skewered* for making. But with this management it's brilliant

Wait, what good current NHLer did we trade for that pick? Or am I missing your point here?

 

[Navin R Slavin]

Oh come on, the Calder Cup team was not brought to anyone by this current management. That team was built by Francis but you can't stomach to give credit.

Yes, Francis deserves credit for much of that roster. I'm delighted to give him credit for that. He's also been gone for more than a year now.

The current management team, on the other hand, deserves credit for the current NHL coach, the current construction of the NHL roster, and everything else that happens in the entire org from this point forward. And rather than getting any respect for the fact that they might actually have a clue about what they're doing, they get... whatever the f*** this nonsense is.

IT'S JUNE 25TH FOR f*** SAKE.

 

[SaskCanesFan]

Wait, what good current NHLer did we trade for that pick? Or am I missing your point here?

I'm taking this trade and the Marleau trade together. I don't think there's a need to clear deHaan's cap if you don't buy the 1st taking on Marleau

 

[HisIceness]

Don't like it but I get it. Best to not get emotionally attached to players.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I'm taking this trade and the Marleau trade together. I don't think there's a need to clear deHaan's cap if you don't buy the 1st taking on Marleau

Unless the two aren’t connected at all. If this was a purely cap-clearing move then there would be no reason to just bend over and take scrubs as a return. CDH isn’t a guy whose contract is so wildly out of line with his play that you take scrubs just to get rid of him.

The injury situation is no joke, the guy has destroyed both his shoulders and won’t even be cleared to play till halfway through the season. That seems much more likely to be the driving factor here, rather than cap concerns from the Marleau deal.

 

[bleedgreen]

I don’t think the Hawks go near him if they don’t think he’s coming back healed.

I agree this goes hand in hand with Marleau. I do think it makes some sense that they knew they were going to move DeHaan and therefore had the space to get Marleau done. If it was done the other way, as a reaction to the first trade then I think it’s fairly incompetent. Regardless, if they hadn’t done the Marleau move in the first place they probably had enough space to do whatever is planned. We’ll see soon enough.

 

[TheReelChuckFletcher]

I'm not a believer in calling any front office geniuses, even though I do believe the current Canes front office is proving to be quite a well-informed one. I do think that Dundon/Waddell and Co. are not doing it to dump salary, since CDH is being paid fairly for his production, but because they like Forsberg and Forsling as players or as prospects. I don't believe that those two names were just drawn out of a hat, but rather they were specifically targeted as being undervalued in some way. Waddell, in fact, was specifically saying that he was intrigued by Anton Forsberg and his #1/tandem potential. Also, I think that Saarela and Forsling was simply a prospect swap, with both teams taking bets on the other with players around the same age.

 

[Roboturner913]

I wouldn't call them geniuses either, but I think they do have a plan. You don't have to be a mastermind to go into this offseason thinking you probably needed to trade a d-man contract. That part is easy. We've talked about that so many times here, and we're just a bunch of dickheads on a message board.

Then, knowing they're going to erase a good chunk of salary by trading a d-man (which everybody assumed would be Faulk), they say "what the heck" when the chance to trade for a first round pick fell into their laps and they knew they'd be able to absorb the cap hit since they were going to be trading the d-man contract already.

You can have a plan and an overall philosophy of doing things, and have good results by sticking to your process, and that doesn't make you an evil genius cackling to himself in a big chair whilst stroking his cat. Nor does it mean you're going to outmanuever everybody else every time.

I just hope we use the cap space to chase a legitimate scoring forward rather than chasing after a brand-name goalie.

 

[ONO94]

OK, the stats you quote are crap.

• Players scoring 100 or more goals occurred at a 30.5% clip in the 1st round. OK, so in this scenario, No. 1 overall = No. 31 overall, right? And the Canes pick that they just got from Toronto has a 30.5 percent chance to score 100 or more goals in the NHL, regardless of where it falls?
  
• So look at the trade for #59--they traded from a round with 9.23% chance of finding offense... No. 59 is the very bottom of the second round. Again, totally equivalent to No. 32, right?
  
• ... for 2 picks having 3.85% chance of offense. Even if they traded No. 59 for Nos. 62 and 63, huh? Because all that matters is the round?

This pick-by-pick value chart is much more indicative of reality. And I think it's pretty obvious to see why, if you're not picking in the top 10, your best bet is to have as many darts as possible inside the top 100. With our first pick at No. 28, it would have been impossible to move into the top 10. Therefore ... darts.

No--that chart shows relative value of picks--not the relative chance of finding an impact offensive player. Those stats would give more credit for finding 5 Brock McGinns than finding 1 Aho. This team isn't 5 mcginns away from a cup but they may be 1 Aho away. My point is the team has to add better forwards not just more forwards. And this trade doesn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies that the front office can turn effective bottom six players into impact scoring players. They couldn't even swap a top 4 defenseman for a full time NHL player.

 

[Blueline Bomber]

Serious question, if our two trades had been made in reverse order, would we feel any differently?

So, first we trade de Haan/Saarela for Forsberg/Forsling. Then we get Marleau, a first and a seventh from Toronto for a sixth-rounder.

Would it make more sense? Be any better? I know it's hard to think this way, but try?

No, because it still seems like taking a step backwards from where we were last year. No matter which order it shows up in, I fail to see how any part of those two deals make us a better team for this playoff window we’ve opened.

If we were simply moving DeHann to clear some space, then sure. They expected him to play on the 3rd pairing, we have guys who can play the 3rd for cheaper, move him. I’d still hate losing DeHann, but I can understand the logic of that. It would open up space to sign a major player to help the team next year.

But if we’re moving DeHann to clear some space, only to fill that space with essentially dead weight and get an asset that may help us 3-5 years down the line, I don’t get it.

How does that improve the ECF team we just had? We didn’t gain any cap space to make moves. We didn’t gain an asset that’ll help immediately, and we lost a player that was our 2nd pair for much of the year (I think I saw till March 11th earlier in the topic?) and a prospect that was, at the very least, much closer to contributing to this team than the Leafs 1st currently is.

Maybe I’m dumb, but that seems like the wrong direction to me. So I’m assuming something else is coming?

 

[DougieSmash]

I'm not saying he has any bright future but Forsberg has some good seasons in AHL - 2015, he was good in 2016, 2017 and 2019. I do believe that Tulsky has word on both of Forsling and Forsberg.

 

[Big Daddy Cane]

The underrated aspect of this trade is that it most likely closes the door on *insert Top 4 RHD* to Toronto.

That's a win for us.

 

[DaJackal]

Simply put, I hate this trade.

 

[Lempo]

I think everyone is completely missing the important takeaway here - we picked up a Swede for @Lucky Lindy.

This was my initial reaction (actually two of them).

Now sign Forslund.

 

[Roboturner913]

I'm not saying he has any bright future but Forsberg has some good seasons in AHL - 2015, he was good in 2016, 2017 and 2019. I do believe that Tulsky has word on both of Forsling and Forsberg.

I looked at Forsberg's NHL stats expecting to see straight up misery, but it's actually not too bad. .908 save percentage last year. Mrazek was, I believe, .912 and Mac was .914 (or the other way around, perhaps).

And his AHL numbers are downright impressive. .927, .914, .926 and .919, and .930+ in 12 playoff games. Put a good defense in front of him and we could have something here in terms of a serviceable backup. It's definitely not as crazy a proposition as thinking Mrazek was going to have a solid year coming off that miserable stint he had in Philly.

 

[HockeyHistorian]

I was looking forward to seeing Saarela on the Canes next season. Hopefully they address the resulting Finn deficiency and trade for Puljujärvi.

 

[TheReelChuckFletcher]

My guess for the defense this season:

Slavin-Hamilton
Fleury-Pesce
Forsling-TVR
Bean

or

Slavin-Hamilton
Pesce-Faulk
Fleury-TVR
Forsling

Either are still pretty good, I'll say, especially if Bean pans out.

 

[sooni]

There is rumors... dunno if true that Lucic&Pulju are coming in and after that Lucic will see byout.