Would you give Stamkos away?

[Bringer of Jollity]

We're already one of the worst teams in the league. Whatever buoyancy Stamkos adds at the moment will decrease over time. We're not 1 player away from becoming a Cup contender. If he wanted out and if there was a team who thought his contract was a sweet deal and they would accept with no strings, we'd be crazy to not take that deal. We have to face it. The demolition to our competitiveness was done. It's time to break out a good blueprint and start rebuilding.

We'd still be stuck with Josi, Forsberg, Saros, Skjei, Marchy. And it isn't like trading Stamkos makes us a much worse team now, or keeping him makes us much better. There is no benefit now to giving him away for nothing. He may have some value to a team as his term starts to wind down and a team is looking to add some PP/extra goal punch for a year or two in an increasing cap environment. While we can't get back the players or other opportunities that were lost because we brought in, or kept, players like him, giving him away just to give him away, when we have no need for the cap space (and can find other roster spots to fee up for the young guys) is just compounding those mistakes.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

Core point to be added: Say we get rid of Stamkos. Okay, cool. It's done. Now who's going to be playing those minutes?

As annoyed as we may be with the roster right now, we still have to build one.

Svechkov and Novak can have some of those minutes for now. The next 30 games don't really matter much. Him playing those minutes isn't building us to anywhere either. He's a declining asset on a terrible team. I'm not sure it has really sunk in to people that him playing those minutes has us sitting #30 in the league? Anybody can play those minutes on a 30th place team.

Then the idea is to get somebody better for next year, the year after, and the year after that. Having $21M in Cap space is no guarantee that we get somebody better. Having a #1OA draft pick isn't even a guarantee. But higher draft picks and more $$$ to spend are at least tools at our disposal in at least TRYING to get somebody better.

Of course, we aren't getting rid of Stamkos anyway. It's purely a hypothetical, since a) he has a NMC, and b) no team would take him. But in the alternate universe where we did find a taker, I suspect Barry Trotz just signs John Tavares for 5x$10M to replace him. So there's that. I'd rather keep Stamkos too in that universe.

 

[herzausstein]

Core point to be added: Say we get rid of Stamkos. Okay, cool. It's done. Now who's going to be playing those minutes?

As annoyed as we may be with the roster right now, we still have to build one.

I would be less concerned about who plays those minutes if we had a coach that promotes younger players... but with Bruno it'll be Hinostroza or Smith.

 

[Kat Predator]

We'd still be stuck with Josi, Forsberg, Saros, Skjei, Marchy. And it isn't like trading Stamkos makes us a much worse team now, or keeping him makes us much better. There is no benefit now to giving him away for nothing. He may have some value to a team as his term starts to wind down and a team is looking to add some PP/extra goal punch for a year or two in an increasing cap environment. While we can't get back the players or other opportunities that were lost because we brought in, or kept, players like him, giving him away just to give him away, when we have no need for the cap space (and can find other roster spots to fee up for the young guys) is just compounding those mistakes.

This was just about Stamkos and sort of a yeah or nay, right? No other team is going to take his contract at face value, so we're sort of arguing about whether pixie dust is more magical than a flying carpet...

However, the cap space freed up is not nothing. If we freed up that much space, we'd have even more space to go after and overpay for a #1C, which is something most everyone is wearing a groove in their brain about here. Stamkos is not our #1C for the future, but his cap space would give us more room in a bidding war situation.

Also, I do agree that he's not valueless. I just see the hypothetical as rephrasing a "what-if" scenario: what if Trotz wasn't our GM and we didn't really make his mistakes?

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

This was just about Stamkos and sort of a yeah or nay, right? No other team is going to take his contract at face value, so we're sort of arguing about whether pixie dust is more magical than a flying carpet...

However, the cap space freed up is not nothing. If we freed up that much space, we'd have even more space to go after and overpay for a #1C, which is something most everyone is wearing a groove in their brain about here. Stamkos is not our #1C for the future, but his cap space would give us more room in a bidding war situation.

Also, I do agree that he's not valueless. I just see the hypothetical as rephrasing a "what-if" scenario: what if Trotz wasn't our GM and we didn't really make his mistakes?

The tinkerbell emoji here is waaaaay bigger than the genie, so I'm going with the pixie dust on this one.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

I would be less concerned about who plays those minutes if we had a coach that promotes younger players... but with Bruno it'll be Hinostroza or Smith.

If it's Hinostroza or Smith, it gets us that much closer to drafting Hagens or Misa anyway. Which is still the best thing we can get out of the current debacle of a season. So again, I really wouldn't care who plays those minutes these last 30 games if Stamkos was gone.

 

[glenngineer]

Not sure why this is even a thing. We didn't give anything up for him. It's not like keeping or giving him up will improve our chances of improving or getting any worse. If someone came along and said, hey, we'd like to acquire Stamkos, he agrees to it and we can get a return, great. To give him away for nothing seems counterproductive.

He's not keeping anyone in the pipeline from playing. If we move on from him then what, playing Hinostroza, Bellows, one of the tweeners from the 4th line higher in the lineup? What does that accomplish? If it forced us to play the third line more, great but that isn't the case now and wouldn't be any different if Stamkos was gone.

We knew him coming here that he had a limited shelf life. If he can put up around 50-60 a year while teaching some of the kids how to be a pro and a winner, that's worth his price tag.

If you want to move on from anyone, it would be Saros and it would be for something underwhelming as his value is not what it once was and with a new contract kicking in next year.

Back to Stamkos for a moment. If we continue to nose dive and land a 1C in the draft and we're willing to play them next year, we can slot Stamkos back to the wing or 2C if we want and then he's slotted in a better position to succeed. Even if he's a shell of his former self, I'd rather a kid learn from him than most of the players we currently have on the roster.

 

[Bringer of Jollity]

This was just about Stamkos and sort of a yeah or nay, right? No other team is going to take his contract at face value, so we're sort of arguing about whether pixie dust is more magical than a flying carpet...

However, the cap space freed up is not nothing. If we freed up that much space, we'd have even more space to go after and overpay for a #1C, which is something most everyone is wearing a groove in their brain about here. Stamkos is not our #1C for the future, but his cap space would give us more room in a bidding war situation.

Also, I do agree that he's not valueless. I just see the hypothetical as rephrasing a "what-if" scenario: what if Trotz wasn't our GM and we didn't really make his mistakes?

It makes it tough to assess some of those because there are so many disparate notions on what direction to head in. At face value, we are crappy team that seems to be heading downward, but may still try to compete next year, I guess.

In that scenario, sure we need a 1C. But who fits that bill that's available at this deadline or offseason we'd need that immediate extra cap space for (and isn't solved by trading or letting go guys like Nyquist, Novak, etc...)? EP40? Tavares? Is Wyatt Johnston REALLY a true #1C we are going to pay 8 figures a year for and can't make the cap room otherwise? I don't see it.

If it is coming from a full rebuild perspective I don't see why we're going "all-in" on getting a 1C just to play through 3-5 crappy years, aside from just them being that hard to get and we don't think we'll have another chance later. Again, I'm not seeing anyone currently available that fits that bill and the timelines for us to get back to competitive.