No to trading Kulak.
I'd rather wait to accrue cap space to bring in a guy like Borgen and trade picks/prospects for him rather than be forced to send salary out by trading a good player/playoff performer/guy who wants to be here for a modest upgrade and leave a hole on the other side.
Maybe you make that trade if Broberg was still here but, then again, if Broberg was still here the Oilers would be in cap hell.
Our ability to accrue cap plan doesn't change at all with Borgen he's signed for $50K less than Kulak and with that trade and in my hypothetical we were sending J, Brown down and Gleason up which is a $225K savings; when adjusted for the deadline that would give us ~$1.245M more capspace to play with.
Creating a hole to fill another hole isn't a great argument IMO when we are filling hole of clearly greater importance, the 2nd pairing vs. the 3rd pairing and IMO the players we have in house are more capable of filling a 3rd pairing hole then our 3rd pairing guys stepping up into a 2nd pairing role.
Also in proposing that a lot of it was with Nurse in mind, he's not the easiest guy to develop chemistry with and the sooner a move is done that is compatible with him, likely the better. My thoughts are also with long term cap projections in mind there is zero shot the cap rises enough to cover the Drai + Bouchard raises, so someone with an NMC is going to have to agree to being traded and I'm looking at Nurse, I want him to have a good enough season where we only have to retain $1.75M AAV per year instead of ~$3M.
Seattle isn't going to just roll over and trade their roster players before the season starts. The only way we get Borgen this year, is if Seattle falls out of the playoff race and they can't re-sign him.
Plus, we need Kulak in the playoffs.
Seattle is ofcourse more likely to trade him if their playoff dreams are dashed, but I believe his fate is already sealed, they brought in Montour pushing him down the depth chart and already extended Larsson, with Borgen's next deal likely over $4M, he should price himself out of a 3rd pairing role.
That doesn't mean they need to trade him now, so we would be paying a little premium over deadline pricing, but I think they'd see Kulak as only a moderate downgrade and locked at a price they more comfortable paying a 3rd line d-man longer term so it improves their cost certainty.
I also don't see Seattle's Management as being dumb, I think they recognize they aren't like Vegas and won't immediately hop into contender status, its going to be more of a process and they are kind of a bubble playoff team at the moment and bubble teams sometimes take 1 step back for 2 steps forward kind of trades.
I also see Kulak's playoff heroics being overblown, he elevates, but not to an extent that makes me forget that we have a 2nd d-pairing that falls flat on its face every post season.