kenjets- Kick some arse!
A couple of basic points that I think we need to keep in mind in the coming months.
1. Slats could pull something off it it makes sense any day now. But remember that he is stubborn. Most trades that he makes seems to involved players or teams that we know that he has worked with for a like half a year.
Ie, if Slats is making calls now, he knows that he just as well might be making the ground work for something that is done in March or in the Summer.
2. 5-6 teams in the West could be cut off come January. That has not been the case in an extremely long time. At previous deadlines, 2-3 teams have been rebuilding. The East is alot tougher, but its 16 teams competing for 8 spost and I wouldn't be suprised if 3-4 teams at least is cut off between January and March. Possibly 5 (there are like 5 teams that should be a bit too weak to compete in the East this year).
That will open things up.
3. I will touch on this subject in another post when I am my usual ridiculous self, but the market is extremely tough right now. But the GMs also has new tools (taking on a portion of the contract (both cap and cash, same relation)) that could open some situations up. It will take a little time for them to get comfortable with this, but it might make sense for us to look into this going forward. We saw it in the Versteeg deal. A vet was dealt to a team that couldn't have paid up for him unless a 50% of the cap hit was taken on.
4. A couple of problems when making a deal is price and not value. I work alot with big transactions and its extremely obvious how things can change dramatically over night when something happens on the other side of the globe with out it really changing anything for the parties involved.
What happens is that the guy buying something all of a sudden wants a bit of a discount because its bad time, while the guy selling something still wants to get paid as usual because in reality its nothing wrong with what he is selling. The "value" is the same, like EBITDA with a mutiple, but they want to price it diffrently.
And this of course applys to any area, among them us trying to deal Del Zotto. We see posts at this place or the trade boards about "how couldn't people have seen how much MDZ sucks before, he actually turned the puck away twice against X eehhehhe". If you have that opinion you don't have a good track of how good the avg D, of the 180 Ds playing regulary in this league, is. Its a hurdle in the way for us. Teams want to get a bargain. We want to get fairly paid. We need something to get past that. That something could be:
(i) We get a player in the exact same position more or less as Del Zotto. Another player caught in a log-jam (think Turris for Rundblad). Another player that is underperforming.
(ii) We deal Del Zotto to a team that desperately needs him (Philly maybe?).
(iii) We deal Del Zotto to a team that acknowledge the picture we have painted of the world. Ottawa for example, MDZ was fantastic against them in the PO's only a year+ ago.
When you look deals made, you can like almost always find a something that really kick-started the process that went down.
Ok, against the background of
4. and
(i) above, its not easy at all to find potential scenarios out there. Yakupov is of course one option that fits the mold, but he is a former 1st round pick and MDZ is still probably to little to get him.
But we have more or less only looked at younger options. With the cap scenario, teams want to hang on to them.
Could a vet on a "bad" contract be an option (RB run for your losec!) -- with the team getting MDZ taking on money?
I mean, if we start at looking at vets with "bad contracts", that would make sense for us
contracts aside, I think we will find alot more interesting names that teams might be willing to move. Looking at the teams in this league from A-Ö, here are some randon names just to name a few.
Bad contracts that would look better if a couple of million is taken back
Tyler Myers (6 x 5.5m)
Christian Erhoff (8 x 4m)
Alex Semin (5 x 7m)
Jeff Skinner (6 x 5.75m)
Nathan Horton (7 x 5.3m)
James Wisniewski (4 x 5.5m)
Johan Franzen (7 x 3.9m)
Ryane Clowe (5 x 4.85m) [jokle]
Vincent Lecavalier (5 x 4.5m)
Mark Streit (4 x 5.2m)
Brent Burns (4 x 5.7m)
Example 1
I mean take Tyler Myers for example. The kid is barely playing solid top 6 hockey right now, he is paid 5.5m per and is in a real negative situation. Buffalo is ridding themselves of misstakes made. Who in their right mind would take him -- with that contract?
OTOH, you got a 6'8 really young RIGHT defensemen. With a heavy shot. Decent first pass. Tremendous reach. Some toughness. He got a 48 pts season in the NHL under his belth.
If Buffalo took on like 25-30% of his contracta, up to 2m per, you get that D for 3.5m per locked up for 6 years. That would definitely put him in another light. The contracts signed out there are really nutty right now, and it seems like the going price for a top 4 D is creeping up towards 4-5m per. We could pay a top 4 D 3.5m per in 2019, I just imagine that could be tremendously valuble. And I definitely think Myers really could use a change of scenary and become a very solid top 4 D (while maybe not a Norris candidate like he was hyped).
Buffalo are rebuilding for sure. Would they be interested in like
Michael Del Zotto,
Kristo,
Skjei and a
2nd round pick package for
Tyler Myers and
30% of the contract? Would anyone do MDZ and Miller for Myers and 30% of contract?
Example 2
Detroit just needs to rebuild. They won't make a trade now, but they could be on the outside looking in in a couple of months.
Johan Franzen is on a nuts contract. Del Zotto would help them for sure. We wouldn't face cap-recapturing issues with Franzen due to Burke...
Would they be interested in making Franzen extremely attractive from a cap point of view by taking back say a mil of his 3.9m cap hit and getting Del Zotto and handful of young depth in return?
Like
Franzen and
25% of contract (giving him a cap hit of 3m per) for
Del Zotto,
Oscar Lindberg,
Kristo,
Skjei and a
3rd rounder? We get our big PF for 4-5 years. We get PO experience and a proven winner. A LW that really could give Nash a board presence. Etc. Detroit jump starts their rebuilding process. They only take back 1m per year.
Bottom line, the proposed thinking is of course far fetched. But many of these guys on horrible contracts get alot more attractive if you take away a couple of millions of their cap hit. They go from players you wouldn't touch with a pole to actually becoming quite interesting.
