HF Habs: Trade Proposal Thread #80

[Habs Halifax]

There is a yawning Chasm between stripping it down to the studs and start over rebuild and completely ignoring the cap, aging curves and going for it after one season of rebuilding.

It's been more than one season of rebuilding. It's possible to keep rebuilding and also look at long term pieces to put in place when those options come available.

I don't think we are going for it for a short term run. Adding Dubois and Huberdeau when we have expiring contracts and a growing cap is a long term plan in terms of competing for a cup.

Yeah, lets continue to shed salary and not spend it while we pick in the top 10. Then after the rebuild, there will be another Huberdeau and Dubois that will want to sign with us right?

 

[Ozmodiar]

Go away with the nit picks. It's not a proposal BTW, it's a cap projection situation…

Who’s nit picking?

I’ll leave you to your “cap projection situations”. Enjoy!

 

[Habs Halifax]

There is too much dead cap space
With the current roster and Hughes won’t be doing much of anything if he doesn’t find a way to move some out. There is a ton of work to do.

I don't think we make moves now though. This latest chatter is about what we can do next off season and don't we all agree, we will know more then?

1) Deadline will show us more.

2) Expiring contracts is something we can calculate today

3) Information on Price will be way more this time next year. This is the season where we find out if he is on LTIR or if he can still play. It won't be middle ground cause Price is not going to play if he can't play to the level he wants to play at.

4) What happens go guys like Hoffman, Armia, Gallagher, Eddy, Savard, Allen? 1-3 of them will be gone and not on our roster for 23/24. Do you want to bet against that?

 

[le_sean]

Lets see:

1. Already paying players for hopeful future performances? With Suzuki and likely Caufield, that's a check.
2. Focusing on forward while ignoring D? That's a check.
3. Betting on D prospects that haven't made the NHL yet? That's a check.

The things the Leafs had that Montreal didn't is that they did most of the work to clean up their awful cap situation and had a better baseline of talent and more certainty in goal. The Habs have not done that.

I don't think anyone has an issue with Huberdeau if its a good deal. The issue is that it almost definitely wont be, since almost every UFA age contract ranges from slightly overpaid to grossly overpaid. And the length of the "fair" deal probably only helps Montreal stay out of the basement, not contend.

Like I said before, you’re acquiring the elite talent at a price that they deserve and hope the young players in your system take a few steps forward. The Leafs young players were the elite talent and they tried to fill the other gaps with over the hill veterans. It’s not similar. One is adding a 1st overall talent and a 2023 Top 10 pick to a 100 point player. The other was adding 37 year olds that always failed to win the Cup to their 1st overall talent 100 point player. One scenario provides massive upside, the other provides nothing.

 

[schwang26]

There is too much dead cap space
With the current roster and Hughes won’t be doing much of anything if he doesn’t find a way to move some out. There is a ton of work to do.

Exactly. This needs to happen before a rebuild. Price, Gallagher, Byron Armia. The expiring contracts will take care of themselves. It'll be interesting to see what they do for a starter too, assuming it's not Price. I like Monty, but I'm not sure he'll get there. Same with Primeau.

 

[absolute garbage]

I'd let the Jets drown with Dubois. The offer is salary in needs to match salary out. Dvorak and Armia fit IMO. Then I'd offer Panthers 1st and Kidney. It's a Trouba offer within flat cap years factored in. Take it or leave it. I'm not trading anything more valuable than the Panthers 1st and Kidney pieces.

Trading Florida's 1st rounder would be a complete and total braindead move. Can't get much stupider than that.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Trading Florida's 1st rounder would be a complete and total braindead move. Can't get much stupider than that.

I disagree. It's going to be a playoff draft pick. Thinking the Panthers pick will slip to lottery is a massive reach. I'd definitely use that piece in the package to get Dubois.

Dubois for his prime
vs
Panthers pick turning into someone better than Dubois?

Trading the Panthers pick for someone in their 30+ years would be dumb yeah.

Like I said before, you’re acquiring the elite talent at a price that they deserve and hope the young players in your system take a few steps forward. The Leafs young players were the elite talent and they tried to fill the other gaps with over the hill veterans. It’s not similar. One is adding a 1st overall talent and a 2023 Top 10 pick to a 100 point player. The other was adding 37 year olds that always failed to win the Cup to their 1st overall talent 100 point player. One scenario provides massive upside, the other provides nothing.

100% agree. It's not the same situation

 

[Guy Larose]

Honestly though, anyone over 25 or 26 probably isn't sticking around. The odds that they keep those guys are slim, so isn't it actually stripping things down? The only ones who MAY be safe would be Edmundson, maybe Savard and or Wideman. For the forward group, the oldest player I see them keeping is Anderson. So ya, it is pretty much a tear down.

They just traded for Matheson (28) and Dadonov (33)...ok you'll say that Dadonov was to get rid of Weber but still...they will get whoever they think will help no matter the age, hence why said that people run with their own narrative on here.

 

[Sterling Archer]

Trading Florida's 1st rounder would be a complete and total braindead move. Can't get much stupider than that.

Agree depending on what the return is.

 

[Captain Mountain]

Like I said before, you’re acquiring the elite talent at a price that they deserve and hope the young players in your system take a few steps forward. The Leafs young players were the elite talent and they tried to fill the other gaps with over the hill veterans. It’s not similar. One is adding a 1st overall talent and a 2023 Top 10 pick to a 100 point player. The other was adding 37 year olds that always failed to win the Cup to their 1st overall talent 100 point player. One scenario provides massive upside, the other provides nothing.

Huberdeau will be a 30 year old offense-only winger with terrible playoff numbers and has struggled to be a guy that can help carry a team to the playoffs. He's an elite player now, but there's a reason Florida traded him, one of the top two-way transitional D-men in the NHL and a 1st for Tkachuk. And that's because players with Huberdeau's profile (average play-driving at ES/PP, bad defensively, value in elite playmaking) generally age terribly.

Montreal already has a lot of inefficient contracts tied up medium to long term (Price, Anderson, Gallagher, Dvorak, Armia, Savard). And if he doesn't continue developing, you can include Suzuki in that group too (although I think he will continue to grow and will more than earn the contract). And there is almost no chance you're getting a UFA like Huberdeau on a good contract.

There's no magic wand fix for that mess in the next 12 months and the eagerness to acquire a guy like Huberdeau makes almost no sense from a teambuilding standpoint. It seems to be more about him being a talented French Canadian that may be interested in playing in Montreal.

At least with Dubois, there are rumours of him wanting to coming to Montreal from other markets and Dubois is 5 years younger.

 

[Adam Michaels]

PLD will speak to the media today 12:30 ET.

I imagine he will be asked about his intention of not signing long term with Jets and Brisson name dropping Montreal.

 

[Habs Halifax]

PLD will speak to the media today 12:30 ET.

I imagine he will be asked about his intention of not signing long term with Jets and Brisson name dropping Montreal.

He's basically going to avoid the question and say he is going to honor his 2 RFA years and show up to play. I'm sure his agent talked to him on how to handle the situation

 

[HABitual Fan]

How our cap space would look with Dubois and Huberdeau and without Dvorak, Hoffman, Drouin, Dadonov, Byron, Armia, & Allen.

I honestly don't see big issues with the cap and it's going to grow a lot for the 24/25 season. We will also find out what Price can do this year and we will know if he can still play or if he is on LTIR. If he is on LTIR, that's a lot more cap space we can use. If he is not, that means he can still play and there is value there.

If Dubois wants to come to the Habs for $7.5M and Huberdeau wants to come for $9M max, I'm not saying no to them. Add them in the mix to Suzuki, Caufield, Slaf, Anderson, Farell, Roy and others and the forward group is solid. Then we see how good Guhle, Harris, Barron, Mailloux and others are on the back end.

Huge difference between signing them as UFA because they want to be here, and going all in and ending the rebuild by trading for them. Too much garbage to clear out before you can even assemble a decent core to support them.

 

[absolute garbage]

I disagree. It's going to be a playoff draft pick. Thinking the Panthers pick will slip to lottery is a massive reach. I'd definitely use that piece in the package to get Dubois.

Dubois for his prime
vs
Panthers pick turning into someone better than Dubois?

Trading the Panthers pick for someone in their 30+ years would be dumb yeah.

"It's going to be a playoff draft pick."

You don't know that. Likely yes, but they just made a move that might be beneficial long-term but definitely made their team worse next season. Their defense is pretty bad, and Bobrovsky is Bobrovsky. If they have couple major injuries during the season, like Ekblad (their defense without Ekblad, yikes) and Barkov who are injured quite often, they could miss playoffs. Remember that plenty of teams in the East are a lot more competitive this season too.

So there's a chance that trading that pick could turn out to be a complete catastrophe. Probably higher chance than with the pick traded for Dvorak, which was already risky. But even if it's a playoff pick, it's still mind-bogglingly stupid to trade it for a player who has a decent chance of coming to Montreal as UFA in 2 years for free when the rebuild should be done anyways. "Dubois in his prime" is completely irrelevant, in fact you could argue it's a negative as it does nothing but hurt the tank for the next 2 seasons.

The only thing you can hope if you're a Habs fan is that HuGo has more patience than people like you. Because if they are like you, this rebuild will 100% fail.

 

[Habs Halifax]

Huge difference between signing them as UFA because they want to be here, and going all in and ending the rebuild by trading for them. Too much garbage to clear out before you can even assemble a decent core to support them.

A lot of "garbage" will be off the books this season. I showed how a $83.5M cap fits with Huberdeau at $9M and Dubois at $7.5M. This is with Price and Gallagher and Anderson but without Dvorak, Hoffman, and Armia.

I think some posters have difficulty of looking into the future and will still talk about Dadonov, Drouin, Byron, and Allen and ignore that we will know more about Price next off season than we do now.

Hoffman, Dvorak, and Armia are not impossible to move. I have two of them in the Dubois trade and if the Jets say no, we don't trade for Dubois and by the time he becomes UFA, one of those contracts expires and the other two have one year left. And that's with a cap that is closer to $90M than some realize. What are the chances Dvorak and Armia are still with us in that 3rd season? Think about it

This is not about what we can do today. It's about what we can do later (next off season and the one after that). And lots of posters are ignoring better information we will have in the future.

 

[Le Tricolore]

PLD will speak to the media today 12:30 ET.

I imagine he will be asked about his intention of not signing long term with Jets and Brisson name dropping Montreal.

And he'll give the boring hockey player answer since he isn't an idiot. He'll say something like "I am committed to winning with the Winnipeg Jets. It's where I signed and it's where I want to be"

 

[Habs Halifax]

"It's going to be a playoff draft pick."

You don't know that. Likely yes, but they just made a move that might be beneficial long-term but definitely made their team worse next season. Their defense is pretty bad, and Bobrovsky is Bobrovsky. If they have couple major injuries during the season, like Ekblad (their defense without Ekblad, yikes) and Barkov who are injured quite often, they could miss playoffs. Remember that plenty of teams in the East are a lot more competitive this season too.

So there's a chance that trading that pick could turn out to be a complete catastrophe. Probably higher chance than with the pick traded for Dvorak, which was already risky. But even if it's a playoff pick, it's still mind-bogglingly stupid to trade it for a player who has a decent chance of coming to Montreal as UFA in 2 years for free when the rebuild should be done anyways. "Dubois in his prime" is completely irrelevant, in fact you could argue it's a negative as it does nothing but hurt the tank for the next 2 seasons.

The only thing you can hope if you're a Habs fan is that HuGo has more patience than people like you. Because if they are like you, this rebuild will 100% fail.

It has higher probability of being a draft pick than a lottery pick. Probably says Dubois for his prime will be better value than whoever we pick with the Panthers pick. You can be in denial with that all you want.

We are not trading the Panthers pick for a 30+ aged player.

You can talk about the Panthers chances of slipping into a lottery pick all day long. It's wishful thinking and yeah, I'm not ignoring it. I've looked at it myself but the chances that is a top 5 pick is very slim!

Top 5 pick vs Dubois is different. Picks 6-10 is subjective and I still think Dubois's prime will be a better player than that range. It gets worse from 11+ in terms of that pick being better than Dubois's prime and 11+ is where probability increases on where that pick will be.

 

[salbutera]

There is a yawning Chasm between stripping it down to the studs and start over rebuild and completely ignoring the cap, aging curves and going for it after one season of rebuilding.

No one is ignoring the cap, fact is $16M+ in cap space will be freed up by mid-April next year.

When you can acquire a high end talent like Huberdeau without any acquisition cost (other than $) and w the Habs being in an advantaged situation vs all the US based teams for once, given said players eligibility for CDN RCA program, it would be utterly foolish to not go all in after Huberdeau on a 6-year deal.

None of the US based teams would be able to match a $50M+ tax free bonus payout in first 3-years of contract, and most of the CDN teams don’t have the cap space to match - except Cgy

 

[Team_Spirit]

Ekblad goes down and it's a lotto pick. Tkachuk is not a generational player he will be lucky to get 85pts while Huberdeau got 85 assists.

 

[JoelWarlord]

It’s simply a product of the most unavoidable thing: time. Suzuki, Caufield, Dach, etc are at a certain age. Once they get to their late 20s they will be PAST THEIR PRIME. Injuries, contract issues, trade requests, etc will hit our budding core — so if we decide to proceed with Suzuki, Caufield et al. we need to respect the timeline.

We are not in a Start From Zero situation and I think many are having trouble conceptualizing it — we only know what a scorched earth rebuild looks like but can’t imagine what the current one which started with a pair of good NHL player assets, should become.

Yeah I absolutely agree, those players are a huge luxury to start the process with, and they mean there is a significant opportunity cost associated with doing the Devils/Sabres/Coyotes type of indefinite tanking build. I think it might start to click for people next offseason, I don't expect the 22-23 Habs to be much higher than maybe 8th from the bottom, but I think the front office is going to be more aggressive next summer than people anticipate, as I fully agree with you that I think Hughes/Gorton understand we're not in a place to just tank for 5 years.

The other thing I think is being underrated is that we already have a lot of the depth pieces on the way too, you don't exactly build around players that you project to play in the bottom six, but you still need quality players there and Montreal has a really strong prospect pool in that respect. We don't currently have the top end of some of the other rebuilders, but our #5-25 prospects are very strong compared to other teams and they should form a strong cohort of depth that arrives at about the same time as our stars, instead of us having to go out and spend stupid money on UFA grinder forwards and Chiarot/Gudbranson type defencemen.

 

[HABitual Fan]

You're waiving your own magic wand to not make it work too. Fair is fair and it works two ways.

I'm using the GM armchair tool. You're using text in a post with don't capture all the context.

A rising cap will do it. I showed you a $83.5M salary cap for 23/24 and the NHLPA outstanding balance is being paid off ahead of schedule. The cap for 24/25 is going to be closer to $90M than you realize today. I've been saying it for more than a year now where posters last year disagreed big time and after Bettman's report this year, I'm tracking to be more closer to the truth than others in their conservative ways. Open your eyes to the contracts being awarded in the last two season and you will see what the players agent sees.

The only issues the Habs have is cap space this year. After this year, the flexibility shifts for next year and it gets better with a growing cap.

The roster I posted was for 23/24. That's after this next season and I also talked about Price too. You're talking about some of the same things I said and trying to use it against me. Weird

Nothing wrong in making decisions based on a rising cap, unless you have a situation like COVID as happened to Toronto with Taveras signing. Just remember that agents and players are also aware, so salaries will increase by a similar percentage. The flat cap era will come to an end and unless you have players on ELC, you overpay the 3tf and 4th liners. You can't be trading picks and prospects just to tread water or you will have a short window to get the job done.

 

[Skip Bayless]

Ekblad goes down and it's a lotto pick. Tkachuk is not a generational player he will be lucky to get 85pts while Huberdeau got 85 assists.

Some Sam Pollock type of shit from HuGo.

 

[Benstheman]

Won't have the cap space to sign Huberdeau and trade for Dubois next summer, unless Hoffman, Dvorak AND Armia are gone. Unless Price is finally done.

That being said, it is highly probable Dvorak is included in the Deal for Dubois. Also would probably need to include one of Armia or Hoffman for cap balance. So there's 2 of them gone in the deal for Dubois.

I can see Winnipeg maybe being interested in bringing Armia back. So a deal of Dubois for Dvorak, Armia, Florida 2023 1st and a good prospect might be enough.

Now you need to find a way to get rid of Hoffman that same summer or before. I guess if cap jump up a bit and since Hoffman will be 1 year away from UFA, we could trade him with a mid pick (3rd round) to a team with cap space.

But all in all, getting both of them next summer will be complicated and will need alot of things to fall in place for that to happen. So i would think we could sign Huberdeau next summer et then Dubois the summer of 2024, when he becomes UFA.

We save Florida's pick in the process and ensure another top 16 pick in 2024.

The other thing is we will need to find a way to get a top pair D and a solid G to even be competitive with this elite forward group. And that will be impossible if Price is still lingering in the twilight zone. So i hope couple of our young D prospects and Primeau/Dobes exceed expectations, and fast, so we could make sense of those two French stars signings.

 

[sandviper]

And he'll give the boring hockey player answer since he isn't an idiot. He'll say something like "I am committed to winning with the Winnipeg Jets. It's where I signed and it's where I want to be"

Assuming nobody asks him about the Go Habs Go mug he'll be drinking from.

 

[Captain Mountain]

No one is ignoring the cap, fact is $16M in cap space will be freed up by mid-April next year.

When you can acquire a high end talent like Huberdeau without any acquisition cost (other than $) and w the Habs being in an advantaged situation vs all the US based teams for once, given said players eligibility for CDN RCA program, it would be utterly foolish to not go all in after Huberdeau on a 6-year deal.

None of the US based teams would be able to match a $50M+ tax free payout in first 3-years of contract, and most of the CDN teams don’t have the cap space to match - except Cgy

We have no real idea if Montreal is advantaged. Huberdeau's preference was to re-sign with Florida. Huberdeau just gave the same hand wave to Montreal that every big name Quebecois player gives.

And Montreal has far more pressing issues than left wing. They have massive question marks in goal, no proven top pair (or even top-3) D-men. Spending over half of that space on a 30 year old winger is a terrible idea given how his game is likely to age. Unless of course there's a way to clear guys like Price completely off the cap sheet (not LTIRetired) for nothing.

And you don't need to preach RCA's to me, I've been arguing them on here for years.