You don't dump Kadri for a 1 year rental unless you think he's gonna make an impact on a run. The defenseman bad at defense we never needed surprisingly didn't work out :p If we don't move him at the deadline it's Kadri for Kerfoot. Cause there's no way he resigns. Please jesus.
So you are assuming if another GM calls Dubas and asks about Nylander he will say right away I promised him he won't be traded by me. All I'm saying is I think Dubas would listen and that's completely different to me saying he's trying to trade him.
The main issue is, Dubas made significant moves with the intention of competing this year, and the team appears to be failing at that. He traded futures for Muzzin, he traded futures to remove Marleau, and trade 3 years of Kadri at a good cap-hit for one year of Barrie due to the Avs retaining at a significantly reduced cap-hit and Kerfoot at market price. So, I don't think you can give him that much a benefit of the doubt. He either should have been able to capitalize on last year's reduced cap-hits of Marner/Matthews, maybe not have the longest hold-out from a contributing player in recent memory, and trading futures to improve our fortunes last year, we shouldn't have stayed stagnant at best.
The issue is though, most other teams have there key players at below market rates, and that is who we are competing against. The price of secondary players isn't going to go down, unless we believe all top players will be adequately paid like our top 4 players. The deals of the guys on teams like Boston, Pitt, Washington, and Tampa allow surplus-value. Outside of Nylander and Tavares, the other issue is the term got with those payments. Yes, I get certain players signed deals similar to Matthews a decade ago, but that wasn't the norm at the time Matthews signed. It was the deals McDavid, Eichel and Drai signed, which was 8-year terms. Which helps due to the back-end giving you more underpaid years as the cap-rises, considering players in their mid to late 20's should still be in their primes. With the Matthews deal, we don't get to capture that backend benefit that Oilers and Sabres will capture with theres.
If the Leafs had traded Nylander after last season when the return wouldn't have been that great and he went on to having the exact season we are seeing today, those same people who wanted Nylander traded would be calling for Dubas to get fired because of that.
But, I'm not sure the long-term strategic outlook does looks awesome. Which I guess is where we differ. Unlike other teams, we paid a premium and didn't get 8 years for Matthews and Marner, which means we likely have fewer years of being underpaid, while they are also paid similarly to elite players who signed 8-year deals within 18 months before them. That increases the likelihood of another significant cap-crunch coming when Matthews and Nylander come up for extensions. Essentially, by signing Tavares, and then signing Matthews to that 5 year deal, he is betting heavily on this 5 year window. Simply put, if we don't manage to win a cup in the next 5 years, given the talent he walked into the job with, he and our management has failed. So, I don't think when you sign Matthews to a 5 year deal, you can write off a year as a cap-crunch year. Especially since it isn't significantly reduced next year either.
Dubas originally tried to trade Kadri to Calgary for T.J. Brodie and he vetoed that since the Flames were on his 10 team no trade list.
Except as you stated Barrie was the wrong player, and that should have been abundantly clear. I don't have an issue with trading Kadri. But, just because the concept was right, but terribly executed trading for something that didn't really solve our needs shouldn't get you points. Any layman can figure out that we should trade our surplus of centers for a RHD. Dubas is paid millions of dollars to find the right one. Yet, he found one who wasn't a good fit next to Rielly or Muzzin for a variety of reasons. Barrie excels in getting a very specific type of usage (middle-pairing QOC while getting heavy offensive zone-starts). Which meant he had to either play that role with Rielly, which downloaded a level of tough usage on to Muzzin which he has never played in his life, playing with someone like Ceci or Holl. Or, Rielly was going to be asked to carry Ceci through extremely tough usage because Barrie needed simplistic usage or finally, you put him on the 3rd pairing with Dermott which doesn't really solve anything.
That doesn't mean he has to then trade him for a player who doesn't fit our needs. You can hold on to Kadri and move him at a later date.
Let's see what Dubas pulls in during his drafts. The only thing we have on the NHL roster is Sandin. People seem to forget that Hanifin was the consensus pick in 2015.
