I've got to be honest, Anunen has been quite the surprise and in a good way.
Looking forward to 4 years of trade proposals that he's worth a 5th, but only if we retain 50%.
Svechkov and L'Heureux are definitely NHL players. So are Wilsby and Stastney. That's some decent graduation in the midst of our other epic fails on that front, I guess. Glass half full?
It's why I say a truly smart GM who is moneyballing this would cash out Saros NOW, before it's too late.
There was a time we would have said this about Tolvanen and Tomasino too. Not that it wasn't necessarily true, but jury is still out on whether the new guys stick with this team.
I think Novak and Evangelista are great current examples? Fabbro/Tomasino/Parssinen/Tolvanen were past ship-sailed examples. But look at what Novak is doing the last couple games, what got him that contract. Or Evangelista last season. Normally you just want to draw a nice linear evolution/progression slope for these kinds of players. Instead we seem to always backtrack... it's weird. Maybe I don't follow the other 31 teams closely enough, but I just don't see any logical reason why that should happen? There is a bit of an urban myth about "sophomore slumps", but... does it happen to EVERY young player, always? I don't think so.
Yeah the last young guys I can even remember coming up and progressing year over year are Arvidsson and Forsberg (and maybe Fiala sort of).I think Novak and Evangelista are great current examples? Fabbro/Tomasino/Parssinen/Tolvanen were past ship-sailed examples. But look at what Novak is doing the last couple games, what got him that contract. Or Evangelista last season. Normally you just want to draw a nice linear evolution/progression slope for these kinds of players. Instead we seem to always backtrack... it's weird. Maybe I don't follow the other 31 teams closely enough, but I just don't see any logical reason why that should happen? There is a bit of an urban myth about "sophomore slumps", but... does it happen to EVERY young player, always? I don't think so.
Svech, novak, and L'Heureux have been doin good work together. When Evangelista gets back, i hope he goes into the top 6 and drops hino out of the lineup. Jankowski can battle smith for 4th line duties
That contract already exists. There’s absolutely no difference between trying to trade him before the contract kicks in or after. Any team that would be willing to trade for him now would have to be willing to take on that contract regardless.It's why I say a truly smart GM who is moneyballing this would cash out Saros NOW, before it's too late.
Saros has been pretty good all year. And there aren't a lot of bona fide long-term successful goalies anywhere in the NHL right now. He's only "above average" these days, not like Vezina-candidate worthy or anything. Which is still ok, and if you have an otherwise-contending team, then having that security in goal is probably nice. I don't see us being "otherwise-contending" in any sense in the next 4 years, however, which are probably the last remaining ones for Saros to continue to hang in there as "above average"?
We absolutely will NOT be able to move him after this new contract kicks in, anyway. He's here for either 4 more months or 8.5 more years. His Cap hit won't be egregious in the new rising NHL Cap world either way. But just the fact that we have to keep running him out there and relegating anybody who comes up behind him or let them go to Houston/Atlanta/KC/New Orleans/wherever in an Expansion draft is definitely not going to be good asset management.
We should have cashed in Saros last summer and hitched our hopes onto Askarov. Ok, that didn't happen. We seem to have lucked out a bit snagging Annunen. But he's no sure bet. We're already in the hole on this. The sad thing is that I'm 100% certain we are just going to go deeper into the hole.
The contract has a NMC in it. That means today, before the contract kicks in, we can trade Saros to any of 31 teams, and he has ZERO say in it.
