Gibson isn't blocking someone? lol Gibson wants to be a full-time starter and that isn't happening with Dostal on the team.
Dostal can't play 82 games. And their AHL guys aren't good enough.
Also keep in mind you don't want to end up in a Swayman situation, where a guy has you over a barrel at negotiation time because he now knows he's your only option. At the very least, it may serve them to keep him through Dostal's extension talk.
This is a two-way street and it seems the issue is asynchronicity to some extent. Gibson is apparently interested in two teams that aren't going to give Verbeek what the Ducks are looking for, for very different reasons.
*Edmonton doesn't really have the right assets to acquire Gibson, especially since they would need retention. That's been my takeaway here.
I don't think retention is a problem, except some Oil fans seem to think the value of the retention alone should be sufficient to acquire Gibson.
*Carolina has those assets, and is probably interested (they "make/take a call" on everybody if they think it might improve the team.) but is an organization that believes philosophically in goalie tandems and having a borderline-NHL-quality 3rd in the AHL. They have their expected 1a goalie and are looking for the 1b goalie in that tandem to replace Andersen.
Anaheim fans know first hand about Andersen. If I have both in the playoffs, I'm starting Gibson without hesitation. Andersen has had the good fortune of playing for mostly good teams, and he can do an excellent job for the most part in that situation, but there's a playoff ceiling there. The Ducks found that out, and so did the Leafs. So long as you don't run into other good teams with better goaltending, or teams you're clearly better than, you'll be fine, but how often does that happen for 4 rounds?
Gibson OTOH has had the misfortune of being a few years too young to be starter in the Ducks' best years. If he'd been the starter a couple years earlier, before the cracks in the Ducks lineup started showing, I suspect they have at least one more Cup. If anything, he papered over their decline for at least a year or two.
Gibson isn't going to be the F/T starter there unless he just outright steals the job by being the Gibson of 5 years ago. He simply doesn't have the value to Carolina to justify Verbeek's expected asking price. Carolina not only doesn't need retention...they would probably rather forego it in order to push down the price further (Kochetkov and Gibson at full-salary is an affordable and serviceable NHL tandem) and send back expiring cap this season to fit Gibson.
I would easily take back Andersen just to fill the tandem for the rest of the year. It's just a question of whether or not there's anything they actually want that works. Perhaps not.
I would suggest perhaps Gibson finds more teams to be interested in.
I'm sure he's fine with just about any competitive playoff team at this point. It just may have to wait another year, when his term is even shorter, and his relative AAV is even lower. Every year, there's a contender that's probably a goalie away. Usually they band-aid it, but once in a while someone goes for it. And I guarantee you, one of these teams that's had goaltending issues this year that declined to pay for Gibson, will crash and burn because netminding, and he still might be available next year.
I could see Carolina maybe adding a Reimer or Quick for dirt cheap as insurance, but spending a 1st on another goalie is likely not in the cards.
Oh man, I wouldn't trust Reimer as insurance at this point. It only took 2 appearances for the Ducks to decide they were better off playing Dostal into the ground when Gibson was out. Quick maybe, but depends on where the Rangers are at ... if they're in the playoffs he's THEIR insurance, no?
Gibson is also 8 years old than Dostal. So in a sense, yeah he's blocking someone. The Ducks, right now, are much better off spending Gibson's money on elite forward help than having him serve as 1B
They already have enough cap space to sign an elite forward, probably even multiples. The problem is, cap space isn't the reason elite forwards won't be signing in Anaheim this summer. It's not an either/or situation, where Gibson holds them back from signing anyone, they theoretically can have both, but the reality is those guys are gonna have the choice of better teams with similar money to offer. They'll be like most other rebuilding teams, picking from leftover FAs and taking on good teams' salary dumps.
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