Panik isn't at all a "fringe NHL" player. I mean I get that you wanna justify trading him for an AHL player last season but it's pretty clear that Panik solidified himself as a regular NHL player this year. He's a very good bottom 6 player who's meshed with with Toews at points but just does not play well with Kane at all. Completely different play styles.
Not interested in the Komorov deal as we'd still have to move out cap to add him in at 50%. Most logical player to movie out would be Kruger and I wouldn't have any interest in that at the time just to add Komorov. Now if we're talking about the Pokka for Kapenen deal that was talked about amongst leaf fans before the year, I'm on board for that one.
Panik's underlying metrics for this year aren't very good, near the bottom of the team in FF%, middling CF%, shooting over 11% compared to a career under 8% which might indicate that what he's doing offensively isn't sustainable (didn't he start the season like pt/g until the 10ish game mark riding like a 35% shooting percentage?) and seems to be a defensive drag on linemates with a bad GArelTM/60 and bad CARelTM/60. He also gets a pretty favourable usage with a 36.7OFZ%, 24.5DFZ% and 38.9NZS%. Nothing attrocious, but doesn't jump off the page as a guy who's really contributing in a vaccuum
It's good that he's looked good in a very favourable situation playing with a top centre, but I don't know that he's solidified his NHL spot with 19 games of play, especially given that the only place he's really found success if in that favourable spot. I'd like to see him play 20-30 games in the bottom 6 to see how he fares
Not saying you should trade for Komarov either, but I could see the Hawks needing an upgrade
at this point I would say that we will likely keep Kapanen over Pokka
