Florida just signed Chris Dreidger for a reason,
to trade Knight.
Florida and Nashville seem to have arrived at the dock everyone has said they’d eventually get to (best to trade the young goalies as the well paid incumbents will be staying starters well past the date the youngsters should be in a starter role) … after the ship already left port.
There was a frenzy of teams looking to latch on to a goalie this summer and would have been thrilled to trade for Askarov or Knight if they were available. These players’ teams only coming to realization now, in mid July, that they’d benefit from trading is a little late to capitalize on that. New Jersey acquired Markstrom. Ottawa acquired Ullmark. Los Angeles committed cap to Kuemper. The music was playing and seats were unoccupied a month ago - the music is stopped now and there are already asses in every seat.
Anyone remember when Brian Burke realized Bryzgalov had no path forward in his organization so waived him? Or when Cory Schneider was clearly roadblocked by an older incumbent in Vancouver, so they traded him? Or Miikka Kiprusoff in San Jose?
Today’s GMs seem unwilling to do things like that. They’ll let their good youngsters rot on the vine as backups through their prime, sooner than make a move that would allow them to become starters elsewhere.
Can’t wait until the league announces expansion and these teams are forced to move on from their hoarding and limiting their own players’ opportunities, and accept less in return than they could have gotten if they made moves when the endgame should have already been clear.
