I just love every aspect of this move. Keeping our powder dry all summer instead of throwing money at a bunch of new Joel Armias and Christian Dvoraks for the sake of making a change, solving the D waiver logjam while getting value for Harris, adding a top 6 winger to ensure Suzuki and Dach both have support, the trickle-down effect of Dvorak now having one of Roy or Newhook on his line, and the 2 year trial term before making a long term financial decision is just all great cap and asset management. I've been hoping this would happen all summer but I just didn't really believe that Laine would truly be this cheap.
Deep down I don't really believe that Laine is going to regain the early promise and become a consistent 40-50 goal guy or anyhthing, but you can't rule out the possibility and I could see Laine really clicking here after getting a big Bell Centre moment playing for a fanbase with passion again. Even if he's "just" the ppg 30-35G pace guy he was in Columbus that's still a great addition when all it cost was money.
This while teams who are "winning the summer" are giving stupid money to mediocre UFAs.
Yeah a lot of the basement teams that "progressed" this summer were basically just signing their own equivalents to Gallagher, Dvorak, Armia, and Savard. Glad we stayed out of that nonsense and went this route instead, and we can probably pluck a guy off waivers to compete with Pezzetta for the 12th forward spot if none of our prospects earn that spot.