Confirmed with Link: Trade: Pierre-Luc Dubois to Washington for Darcy Kuemper… the trade is one for one

[Misery74]

You’re correct. I’ll edit. You can sell me on a 97/99/85 point guy vs a……28 pt guy


Because he’s a real player. Not an albatross

Haven’t there been issues with Marner and his dad in Toronto? Honest question, I believe so though.

Marner has a NTC, I like how you conveniently avoid that, or maybe didn’t know. If that player doesn’t want to be traded, he cannot be. How can you trade for a player that cannot be traded?

Let’s say, he does say, “ok, I’ll waive for Washington.”, which we could never know. What does Marner cost?

Given he has a No f***ing Trade?
Given he is one year from UFA?

 

[Jags]

To spell out this contract for some folks

Condescending much? We can count.

We're also realists who know the deal is done and now we need to look at where we are, not live in Neverland whinging about a bell you can't unring.

The reality of the situation is that we got rid of Kuemper's hit, and PLD is basically a replacement for Kuznetsov. That's $9.15m off the books and $8.5m on. Kuznetsov's hit drops off after this coming season. For the next 3 seasons, PLD's contract is mitigated by those factors.

So either talk to us about this in 3 years or wait until PLD actually sucks. Until then you and @Todd Lazarchick are just engaging in masturbatory prognostication. Make it mutual and enjoy yourselves, but please leave us out of it.

We cannot move him at all without waiver?

A no trade clause only spells doom if the guy doesn't play well and doesn't want to leave. If we can get him going, he may very well want to leave. DC isn't going to be a hotbed of championship-caliber hockey for the next few years, so it's not crazy to think he'd be motivated to move to a contender, or even just somewhere with a better climate or tax situation.

If he shits the bed, it doesn't cost us mightily until we get to the post-Ovi chapter, and we can deal with it then.

 

[kingbrath]

Carolina isn’t trading Necas to us?

What does Ehlers cost?

PLD is cheaper than both Guentzel and Reinhart, but I won’t pretend they aren’t better players.

If you add in losing Kuemper, PLD value gets better. Kuemper is a terrible backup. LA should buy him out.

Curious, why did Washington not buy him out?

 

[hb13xchamps]

This is exactly my point. GMBM has no direction for this team. If you want to improve the team then actually improve the effing team. If you want to tank then tank. This consistent “what are we” meddling is infuriating. His constant move is we hope to strike lighting in a bottle. There’s no denying PLD has talent. But you’re now saying no we will be the ones to figure him out. All while they aren’t good enough to win or bad enough to tank.

You can blame Ted and Ovechkin/Backstrom for that. Ted promised Ovechkin the team would be competitive and wouldn’t go full rebuild. The organization also paid Backstrom a boat load of money and he gets injured within a year. If he doesnt make his comeback attempt, the roster last year could have added another player to fit his salary slot. Instead, he decides to play 8 games and LTIRetire. Hindsight shows us that this team would have been better off selling assets a few years back and restocking the system. Instead we are stuck in no man’s land until Ovechkin hangs them up

 

[hb13xchamps]

Also a reminder that prospect pool rankings don’t mean jack shit. Recent example is the Kings, who had a top 5 prospect pool a few years back and only a few guys graduated from that list.

Meanwhile Washington had a bottom feeder prospect pool and has graduated McMichael, Malenstyn, Protas, AA and most likely Lapierre in the past few seasons. Plus a few other guys in recent years who are on other teams like Leason and AJF.

 

[Holtbyisms]

I'm trying to simply figure out what this means for the organization. They appeared to begin the rebuilding process multiple years too late to do an effective tear down that would get them picks and prospects for the last years of the core from the '09-'18 era, so a rebuild that might have been shorter turned into a guaranteed dumpster fire the second Ovy gets the points record. They did a nice job selling at the '23 deadline, and a reasonable job selling at the '24 deadline to recoup some picks to stock the system but its worth remembering that pre-Leonard pick from'24, this farm system was typically ranked 23rd-26th in the league (so 25th-30th percentile in quality at best), and after its still ranked in the bottom 12 to bottom 8 of the league by most. Now add in that the team itself in SRS was bottom 6th in the league and basically made the playoffs due to randomness rather than talent last year. They were basically somewhere between 18th and 26th best in the league last year and on a "getting worse as they age out" trajectory rather than better.

So to me, I'm simply trying to figure out if it matters that his contract sucks. The rebuild we commence from will take FOREVER. Much like the current Wiz rebuild. We lack the farm system and the young talent at the nhl level, and the assets anyone would want to trade for to cut years off the 5+ year hellscape in our future. So maybe this ends up like the aughts where they did their sell off in '02, were accidentally competitive in '03, and then finally fell apart in '03-'04, and spent 4 years in hell before making their first of a decades worth of runs in '07-'08. This will clearly take longer than that, and does it matter that we're on the hook for another 7 years of a crap contract when we are headed straight into the toilet right now regardless of the trade? I have no idea. I would just prefer to know why we did this? Are they trying to accelerate Ovy reaching the record process w/a decent center, are we just trying to fix a major center issue now, to simplify our future draft processes? What are we doing? Are they delusional about what the next 5 years look like or rational? I can't answer that, I can't figure out what they are doing. The only solace I take is that they've used the past two trade deadlines properly to try and rebuild the farm. I would love to get inside the head of the idiot owner and the GM to figure out if they're just another iteration of the stupidity of the Wiz brass that ruined their ability to rebuild properly '19-'23, or if they know they're screwed, and fully intend to fix this over the long term w/o quick fix stupidity and wastes on hopeless and pointless playoff chasing trades.

Those of us who wanted to tear it all down a couple years ago feel your pain. Buckle up buddy. We're in for a rough ride.

 

[Carlzner]

Also a reminder that prospect pool rankings don’t mean jack shit. Recent example is the Kings, who had a top 5 prospect pool a few years back and only a few guys graduated from that list.

Meanwhile Washington had a bottom feeder prospect pool and has graduated McMichael, Malenstyn, Protas, AA and most likely Lapierre in the past few seasons. Plus a few other guys in recent years who are on other teams like Leason and AJF.

The argument is one Byfield panning out is worth more than a bunch of depth pieces panning out.

I truly think Leonard can be that kind of a piece for us though.

 

[The Consiglieri]

We have the 14th rated farm system. Top half.

18th according to hockeywriters (The NHL’s Best Farm Systems Ranked - 2023-24 Midseason Update - The Hockey Writers Editor's Choice Latest News, Analysis & More
granted this involves rankings from six months ago.

and 20th by theathletic. 2024 NHL prospect pool rankings: No. 20 Washington Capitals

Whose rating us 14th?

 

[VaCaps Fan]

GMGM.

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

You can blame Ted and Ovechkin/Backstrom for that. Ted promised Ovechkin the team would be competitive and wouldn’t go full rebuild. The organization also paid Backstrom a boat load of money and he gets injured within a year. If he doesnt make his comeback attempt, the roster last year could have added another player to fit his salary slot. Instead, he decides to play 8 games and LTIRetire. Hindsight shows us that this team would have been better off selling assets a few years back and restocking the system. Instead we are stuck in no man’s land until Ovechkin hangs them up

Right and if Ted told GMBM help Ovie get the record and sell tickets and MSN streamers, which we now know Ted only cares about his bottom line. What is GMBM suppose to do? He likely knows by now which top FAs would be interested for playing for the caps and im guessing thats no one, hence the trade.

 

[Leafshater67]

30g 2C that’s 6’4, 225 and about 3m overpaid (as of current cap) that fills a position of major need, exchanged for a cap dump. Seems fine to me.

 

[The Consiglieri]

Those of us who wanted to tear it all down a couple years ago feel your pain. Buckle up buddy. We're in for a rough ride.

I will freely own that I was in favor of tearing it down after the '16-'17 all in season only to see us finally break the choking history the following year, lol, great for personal humility. Afterwards I would allow, though not personally support the defense of the title in '18-'19, but found the going halfway stupidity '19-'20 and ever after clinically insane. I cannot believe a franchise prioritized Ovy's record to such an extent that they basically delayed the rebuild a half decade in the process, and extended how long it will take to become competitive again by at least 2x or 3x in orders of magnitude. Somebody above me mentioned this thing taking 2-3 years after Ovy is done. I think 5-7 is more likely. We don't have the players to ship out for value in trades to work as a catalyst like we did 22 years ago (admittedly we turned all those guys fromt he Oates trade and everyone else into largely nothing at all, remember Sivek and Lupaschuk?).

To my mind, a post ovy rebuild would normally take 3-4 years if we could gather some assets to accelerate this via trades but we didn't trade Backstrom, Carlson, and Ovy and Kuz etc when we needed to 5 years ago to accelerate the process and so got peanuts for the few we unloaded. To my mind that means it will take us at least 4-6 years (and I lean more 5-7) before we win 45-50 games again and that's just if we do a ton right over the next few years in the draft.

I am definitely debbie downer here I know, but I find some of this a bit silly. This team is locked in to go '19-'29 w/o much chance whatsoever of ever being considered even a dark horse contender. I don't think they contend again until 2030 or later. The one thing that bothers me more than anything is probably the NTC angle. Looking at his career it definitely looked like LA is an outlier season. Just in terms of counting stats, when he plays close to a full season, he's a 60 point guy other than last year. His dips beyond that are injured years. So he's fine, a guy whose probably close to worth the contract, and maybe definitely worth it if he continues to pile in the 60 point seasons several years in the future, but for me, the only reason to do this is basically as a buy low sell high as we nose this franchise plane right into the ground, hit rock bottom and start the rebuild in '25 and beyond, and how tradable is he? I assume he'll want to be moved if he starts recouping his value and we are bottom 5 in the league for quite a while going forward, but maybe he'll just like piling in points and getting his looks like some players? Anyway, that's the only selling point to me. I don't really care that it hamstrings us for years because these years were flushed down the toilet anyway when we didn't start the tear down '19-'21. We are gonna be irrelevant the rest of the decade whether we made this trade or not, I just wish I knew why the FO did it. Are they delusional? Was it to just fill a hole on the second line so we could use draft capital elsewhere, or was it a buy low sell high? I have no idea, and I wish I did because it would give us a much better idea of how well the franchise will handle 2024-2026.

 

[g00n]

You’re correct. I’ll edit. You can sell me on a 97/99/85 point guy vs a……28 pt guy


Because he’s a real player. Not an albatross

Who is a 28 pt guy? PLD was 40pts in a down year last season. His previous 2yrs in WPG he was 60 and 63pts with 28 and 27 goals.

Marner just put up 85pts on the 2nd highest scoring team in the league (missed 1st place by 3 goals vs COL). Mathews had 69 goals and Nylander had 40. That's a lot of potential apples for Marner, yes?

Marner had 26 goals, so most of his points were assists.

Know who the top scorer for LA was? Fiala at 29 goals (50th in the league).

I wonder how many points each would have if they'd swapped teams?

Again, this trade might flop, but you have your mind made up and your bad faith posting is getting tiresome.

 

[hb13xchamps]

The argument is one Byfield panning out is worth more than a bunch of depth pieces panning out.

I truly think Leonard can be that kind of a piece for us though.

Byfield was also drafted 2nd overall so he was pretty much expected to pan out. Caps haven’t picked a player in the top 5 since Karl Alzner in 2007.

Our prospect pool might not have the potential of a lot of the teams who have sucked for years and picked in the top 10 consistently. I do trust that our player development team and minor league coaches are doing a fine job of targeting weaknesses and improving them, and in return developing NHL players. We could have a few late first rounder blossom into top 6 NHL players.

 

[The Consiglieri]

This is exactly my point. GMBM has no direction for this team. If you want to improve the team then actually improve the effing team. If you want to tank then tank. This consistent “what are we” meddling is infuriating. His constant move is we hope to strike lighting in a bottle. There’s no denying PLD has talent. But you’re now saying no we will be the ones to figure him out. All while they aren’t good enough to win or bad enough to tank.

Im pretty sure we're going to be tanking going forward. SRS said we were what, 25th best last year? The old school NHL points model said we were 18th best, but due to randomness, we bubbled from 18th-19th best around the trade deadline in record to 16th as every one around us turned to tanking. I think that's highly unlikely next year. I suspect we finish bottom 7-10 in the league. Not a total collapse, but beginning to get there, I'm betting by '25-'26 we'll be bottom 5 in the league, the problem is gonna be that we won't be easily worst 3 maybe any of these seasons, but it really depends on how thoroughly we empty out guys for picks and prospects at the '25-'26 deadlines.

I do what to know what the purpose of this deal is. Is it trying to ramp up the overall peformance, trying to just fill a hole, or trying to acquire an asset at a low price, that we can sell later for higher? The odds very much are that he turns in 55-65 point seasons the next 2-3 years than that he bottoms out at 25-45 point seasons, looking at his career, and the likely ice time and pp time he gets moving forward. At least I think so anyway. But I wish I knew if this was a trade based on delusion (he'll help us win 38-43 next year) or is it just mining for value and helping fill roster holes to make the rebuild easier. Knowing if it is based on delusion or a long term rebuild plan would make me feel a ton better in terms of clarity.

 

[The Consiglieri]

You can blame Ted and Ovechkin/Backstrom for that. Ted promised Ovechkin the team would be competitive and wouldn’t go full rebuild. The organization also paid Backstrom a boat load of money and he gets injured within a year. If he doesnt make his comeback attempt, the roster last year could have added another player to fit his salary slot. Instead, he decides to play 8 games and LTIRetire. Hindsight shows us that this team would have been better off selling assets a few years back and restocking the system. Instead we are stuck in no man’s land until Ovechkin hangs them up

I would argue that it wasn't hindsight really. The team was all in making runs and failing '09-'18, rationally, they should have been ready to pack it in after '16-'17's failure but then they inexplicably won a title with a much worse team than the groups from '09-'10 through '16-'17, even w/that happening in '18, the swift decline '19-'21 should have made it obvious it was time to do a tear down years ago (I was in support in '18 lol, and 1000% demanding it by summer '19), the fact that they were stupid for not doing it during the summer or trade deadlines of '19, '20, '21, and '22 is not a hindsight thing, it was patently obvious for anyone who watches sports. When you sell off your farm system for playoff runs, and your stars hit their 30's, the only direction your franchise is going after that is down, which is why you do tear downs in the first place, to provide yourself a short cut on the inevitable long term rebuild that comes from a golden generation aging out, and your team lacking the prospect talent to do a retool instead.

Because of a stupid --- record, we decided against the long term interests of the franchise years ago. I still find this utterly inexplicable. If guys like Gretzky and Borque aren't sacred, why on earth was a record so sacred? Well, it's now 4 years way past the sell by date in terms of getting that decision right, instead of wrong as Ted has done with both of his franchises he's run into the ground. .

 

[g00n]

Let's look at the Marner comparison another way.

There is no chance MM comes to the Caps and puts up 100pts. Strome had a career year and had 67. Two years ago Ovie had 75 but on the strength of 42 goals. In the Cup season Kuzy had 83. Marner is not coming here and playing 20min/g like he did in TOR and racking up 100pts. No way.

So let's assume Marner duplicates last year's numbers and has about 85pts. He has 1 more year around 10.9M/yr, and then he's likely to balloon to something like 12M+/season, right? Probably more? Isn't that the expectation, at least?

Let's be conservative on MM's next contract, and let's also say PLD goes back to at least his form in WPG on his current, locked-in 8.5M contract. Compare points/$:


MM: 12M/85pts = 141K/pt

PLD: 8.5M/60pts = 141K/pt

It's pretty clear that GMBM is seeing something just like this and doing this same math, and figuring one guy for 4 or so years on a NMC will be lighter on the salary cap than the other guy, and may respond to Carbery just like Mantha did.

Then there's the shit with Marner's dad that you hear about. Does PLD have anything like that going on, or is it just people saying he slacks on defense?

Either way this is nothing to cry about. If it were prime Ovechkin years and this trade prevented us from building a defense better than KiwiDoig or whatever due to cap hit, then there's reason to fume. But not now. Not yet.

 

[Misery74]

18th according to hockeywriters (The NHL’s Best Farm Systems Ranked - 2023-24 Midseason Update - The Hockey Writers Editor's Choice Latest News, Analysis & More
granted this involves rankings from six months ago.

and 20th by theathletic. 2024 NHL prospect pool rankings: No. 20 Washington Capitals

Whose rating us 14th?

We have the 18th best prospect pool.

 

[Ovechkins Wodka]

I would argue that it wasn't hindsight really. The team was all in making runs and failing '09-'18, rationally, they should have been ready to pack it in after '16-'17's failure but then they inexplicably won a title with a much worse team than the groups from '09-'10 through '16-'17, even w/that happening in '18, the swift decline '19-'21 should have made it obvious it was time to do a tear down years ago (I was in support in '18 lol, and 1000% demanding it by summer '19), the fact that they were stupid for not doing it during the summer or trade deadlines of '19, '20, '21, and '22 is not a hindsight thing, it was patently obvious for anyone who watches sports. When you sell off your farm system for playoff runs, and your stars hit their 30's, the only direction your franchise is going after that is down, which is why you do tear downs in the first place, to provide yourself a short cut on the inevitable long term rebuild that comes from a golden generation aging out, and your team lacking the prospect talent to do a retool instead.

Because of a stupid --- record, we decided against the long term interests of the franchise years ago. I still find this utterly inexplicable. If guys like Gretzky and Borque aren't sacred, why on earth was a record so sacred? Well, it's now 4 years way past the sell by date in terms of getting that decision right, instead of wrong as Ted has done with both of his franchises he's run into the ground. .

Hey! Dont forget Teds last place WNBA team lol

 

[Holtbyisms]

Hey! Dont forget Teds last place WNBA team lol

Let's hope he gets the nationals and he can have four team fighting for the #1 pick every year! lol...nah it's not all gloom. I like the current prospects we have. I think we start to see a good team again in about 4 years and hopefully compete in 5-6ish

 

[bacchist]

I guess there's no way to restructure his contract in a couple years when his actual salary will be below his cap hit?

Seems weird that Winnipeg signed him long term and then traded him the same day. I'm guessing it was the contract that LA wanted. But since it was an $8m signing bonus and a $1m salary in the first year, maybe it was a way for Winnipeg to basically give LA $8m as part of the deal?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it all, but I can't shake off this feeling that we got stuck with the hot potato here.

 

[The Consiglieri]

We have the 18th best prospect pool.

Based on Hockeywriters.com?

 

[Todd Lazarchick]

Haven’t there been issues with Marner and his dad in Toronto? Honest question, I believe so though.

Marner has a NTC, I like how you conveniently avoid that, or maybe didn’t know. If that player doesn’t want to be traded, he cannot be. How can you trade for a player that cannot be traded?

Let’s say, he does say, “ok, I’ll waive for Washington.”, which we could never know. What does Marner cost?

Given he has a No f***ing Trade?
Given he is one year from UFA?

This place is hilarious lol. He’s not my top choice. Not even top 3. He gets brought up in reference to me and all of you trying to justify this putrid trade. Follow along please.

 

[Holtbyisms]

I guess there's no way to restructure his contract in a couple years when his actual salary will be below his cap hit?

Seems weird that Winnipeg signed him long term and then traded him the same day. I'm guessing it was the contract that LA wanted. But since it was an $8m signing bonus and a $1m salary in the first year, maybe it was a way for Winnipeg to basically give LA $8m as part of the deal?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it all, but I can't shake off this feeling that we got stuck with the hot potato here.

Yeah it was a sign and trade. Kings wouldn't have given that much up without the deal in place. I definitely have similar fears with that cap hit but not a whole hell of a lot we can do about it now. Gotta pull for the guy, he's our #1 center for the foreseeable future. We've got a top notch lock room, a good young coach guys will run through a wall for and a strong fan base. Let's hope his season last year is a one off and that his desire to find a place to play long term that feels right and works for him and his family ends here.

 

[Todd Lazarchick]

Condescending much? We can count.

We're also realists who know the deal is done and now we need to look at where we are, not live in Neverland whinging about a bell you can't unring.

The reality of the situation is that we got rid of Kuemper's hit, and PLD is basically a replacement for Kuznetsov. That's $9.15m off the books and $8.5m on. Kuznetsov's hit drops off after this coming season. For the next 3 seasons, PLD's contract is mitigated by those factors.

So either talk to us about this in 3 years or wait until PLD actually sucks. Until then you and @Todd Lazarchick are just engaging in masturbatory prognostication. Make it mutual and enjoy yourselves, but please leave us out of it.



A no trade clause only spells doom if the guy doesn't play well and doesn't want to leave. If we can get him going, he may very well want to leave. DC isn't going to be a hotbed of championship-caliber hockey for the next few years, so it's not crazy to think he'd be motivated to move to a contender, or even just somewhere with a better climate or tax situation.

If he shits the bed, it doesn't cost us mightily until we get to the post-Ovi chapter, and we can deal with it

Condescending much? We can count.

We're also realists who know the deal is done and now we need to look at where we are, not live in Neverland whinging about a bell you can't unring.

The reality of the situation is that we got rid of Kuemper's hit, and PLD is basically a replacement for Kuznetsov. That's $9.15m off the books and $8.5m on. Kuznetsov's hit drops off after this coming season. For the next 3 seasons, PLD's contract is mitigated by those factors.

So either talk to us about this in 3 years or wait until PLD actually sucks. Until then you and @Todd Lazarchick are just engaging in masturbatory prognostication. Make it mutual and enjoy yourselves, but please leave us out of it.



A no trade clause only spells doom if the guy doesn't play well and doesn't want to leave. If we can get him going, he may very well want to leave. DC isn't going to be a hotbed of championship-caliber hockey for the next few years, so it's not crazy to think he'd be motivated to move to a contender, or even just somewhere with a better climate or tax situation.

If he shits the bed, it doesn't cost us mightily until we get to the post-Ovi chapter, and we can deal with it then.

So we just have to accept that our GM is awful and be happy about it? It’s a weird world you live in homie lol