A quick shout-out to
@billingtons ghost and
@longislanddevil and all the guys who backed me up when people on the Devils threads wanted to give up significantly more than it took to acquire PK Subban to trade for the #4D on the Minnesota Wild.
Thank you very much, kind sir!
I’m far from Nostradamus and surely can’t take credit but it sure is fun to play armchair GM!! It’s funny that I found text messages to my brother from 10 days ago in which I advocated for a Subban/Devils trade. I, like many other Devils fans such as yourself, felt this was a trade that made a lot of sense for both sides. With our profound need for a major upgrade on defense (to go along with Ty Smith’s impending arrival) coupled with Nashville having entirely way too much money invested in their D corps and Josi in line for a huge raise, it felt like the Devils and Preds were a natural fit for a deal here. I fully expect the Preds will reallocate the Subban $ for much needed scoring pop upfront (Duchene?). I do believe their unceremonious first round loss to Dallas was the wake up call and realization that they need some tweaking. You had declared Shero was waiting for the opportune time to weaponize that cap space and that he would pounce when the right opportunity presented itself. Ray himself said this and I’ve tried to politely remind our fellow Devils fans to be patient with this.
But I digress...considering Shero and Poile have a long history together and working relationship with other smaller scale deals previously consummated, it felt like something might be brewing.
I’m surprised many thought it would take a blue chip prospect like Ty Smith as the cornerstone of a deal to happen. This isn’t Ray’s first rodeo and he was never going to include Smith in any sort of package. Nashville never had a ton of leverage here for a massive haul if they expected teams to pick up 100% of Subban’s contract. There are only a handful of teams with that sort of cap flexibility which narrows down the trade market for the player quite substantially.
With the aforementioned paragraph said, did I think the Devils could acquire Subban for Davies, Santini and two second round picks? Somewhat close but not quite. I’m thrilled we did not have to include a Joey Anderson or a Miles Wood. While it would have been disappointing to see either go, I still would have been completely on-board. However, the notion that the Devils were ever going to need to include a Smith or Jesper Bratt to get Subban? It seemed a bit preposterous to me. Perhaps a lesser GM would have needed to...just look at Ray’s stellar trade history. This man deserves respect and is one of the best GMs in the NHL.
Let’s rejoice. It has been a transformative and historical 24+ hours for our beloved Devils franchise!!
