Ullmark for $5 million a year? Like…what?

Hoffman can shoot the puck though.

Spending so much money on Danault who doesn’t score ever seems pretty terrible also.

He's good. Rask out.

Ullmark also did that behind an absolute tire fire of a hockey club.

Like Grapes used to say about Allan Bester: "that guy sees more rubber than a dead skunk on the Trans-Canada Highway!"

I thought Sweeney has done an excellent job this week. They didn't end up getting Coleman, but they had immediate pivots to really good value Plan Bs. *wink wink*

Besides, a fully engaged & bought-in Hall at $6m x 4 made their offseason a success immediately.

Also...I think the Flames need to make a run at Eichel. It's been 7 years...time to push the chips in. And I think they're one of the last remaining teams that actually *can* still do it.

don't see the flames as a logical trade partner unless they offer real stuff like tkachuk/mangiapane or the sabres are still morans who will take junk

everyone should be trying to get eichel though, yeah

Buffalo's overplaying their hand. They still have time, but the reality is the very first piece of business any acquiring team will conduct with their shiny "new" 1C is approving his desired surgery to replace a herniated disc in his neck w/ an artificial counterpart.

Obviously tough to figure out what's true & false, but when you hear reports that the Sabres haven't shared the medical files with *anyone*...

I mean, as great as Jack is, if you're going to make a 5-yr, $50M, 12%-of-your-cap commitment to a player, what ownership group in their right mind is giving their FO approval to proceed w/o finishing their due diligence? After a year without gate revenue? Nuh-uh.

They want 4 "first round equivalent" pieces. I'm predicting they get three. Eichel has a lot more risk than people seem willing to admit.

End of the day, I also think the enormous returns they somehow got for Ristolainen & Reinhart will eventually increase their appetite for a slightly smaller return.

Adams has done well. Might be time to just go to the cage & focus those real cash savings on stuff that'll help the rebuild succeed...like re-staffing your Western area scouting network, for starters...

Eichel's camp is pissed; they wanna get on with things. This is going to reach a conclusion sooner rather than later.

was that rumour going around the other day that the sabres asked vegas for smith, krebs, hague, and a 1st

must be fake bc they should have snapped that


eichel a cool +11.5% corsi/fenwick relative for his career lol
imagine once he gets to play with a few actually good players

doubt his injury* is much of a concern, you're thinking long-term with a guy like that
franchise cornerstone for 10+ years

* - might not even be too real, just his justification to **** with them and get out

2022 1st + Valimaki + Dube + plugging nose & eating Monahan's final 2 years probably gets it done by the end of this. Perhaps replace Dube w/ Pelletier or Zary, maybe throw in one of Calgary's two 2022 2nds to cap it off, but you get the point.

Based on Evol-Wild RFA projections (w/ Valimaki @ $1.565M & Dube @ ~$2M), those two plus Monahan's last two years comes out to $9.94M total. So salary is basically a wash, except you get to pivot out of Monahan's boat anchor 3 years earlier; that money goes towards post-ELC for Dahlin, Cozens...Shane Wright? And so on.

Honestly if Minnesota is balking at sending both Boldy & Rossi + 1st (or 1sts)...and LA pivoted to Danault, MTL used remaining space on Hoffman, NYR seems to be disinterested now too...who's left? Anaheim possibly? But are they as desperate to compete right now if it means losing someone like Zegras?

It's not a large list of realistic suitors left, and I just threw out an equal cash exchange package on the table that still gets you a 1st, a high-upside club-controlled young D, a high-upside club-controlled young F, and a smaller 1C cash commitment for a team you expect to be bad anyway - and you might be able to give him a kickstart again & flip him for even more futures at either deadline?

I'm serious, I think it's gonna be Calgary. Ready to get my heart broken, but excited at the thought of the All-Yankee line up top...13-15-19, oh baby.

He's going under the knife for a neck procedure and won't be ready for the start of your season, which brings up further injury risk getting up-to-speed for a delayed season start.

Even if it's very likely a standard recovery, this is not going to be treated like other, more common offseason/pre-camp procedures.

Also, re: that Vegas package...the money doesn't really work. Vegas still over the cap, Krebs is a non-rostered ELC, Smith is only one more year @ $5m and Hague is one more year @ $750k-ish. So there's a lot more scale balancing that needs to happen there, one way or another.

Vegas has also used a lot of powder to land Stone, Pacioretty, etc...people who watch the Dub are super, super high on Krebs. He's their last real blue chipper up front IMO. It'll be similar to Anaheim's appetite for losing Zegras, albeit for slightly different reasons.

The one team that I am genuinely concerned about though...Carolina could put together a very competitive offer and would also have the cap space to absorb without issue, even after a Svechnikov extension to play on his wing (assuming a k like Niederreiter went the other way).

It basically ruined her life. These are the types of things that cause people to commit suicide.

The return of Geddy makes me happy.

100% yes. krebs was supposed to be on the vgk playoff roster but got injured. he's been called the vgk version of cole caulfield. any trade rumors that involved him and additional players I would be very skeptical of.

i mean ok glgl getting jack eichel without giving up anything good


new sabres management doesn't seem braindead, but who knows

Sweet. Reaves is out of the Pacific. I await the future fights between him and Tom Wilson.

nah that sucks, vegas way more dangerous now icing 12 forwards who can actually play hockey

hmmm....well there goes vgk #2 in fan popularity. there is no #3.

quite an off season - the new franchise honeymoon is definitely over here.

guess keegan kolesar will be the new vgk enforcer.

Stone is gonna be the #1 popularity guy for sure, gonna need to make up for disappearing in Montreal series though.

Maybe, maybe not.

There were a lot of people who thought Sakic was overplaying his hand a few years ago when Duchene wanted out, and he ended up getting full value or more.

Buffalo (frankly) has no reason to rush the trade. They don't plan to contend this year in any way and will probably be tanking for Shane Wright, so if they can LTIR Eichel all year, it's no skin off their nose. Maybe by year end, Power+Dahlen are anchoring a great back end, they've grabbed Wright in the draft, let Eichel have his surgery, and everything great again.

Or maybe they continue to bumble along, but at the deadline, some team pays the ransom to go for the Cup.

Buffalo holds all the cards here and should play them strong. If Calgary wants him, I don't see any trade Buffalo makes that doesn't include Tkachuk. Nothing else on that roster has sufficient star power to get it done.

Fair points Punker, for sure.

Devil's advocate: Duchene wasn't about to go under the knife for neck surgery. The questions being asked about Duchene weren't health related...it was trying to convince buyers that he was a) actually a 1C, not a 1LW at best; and b) the off-ice fit issues were overblown.

Lotta smart teams steered clear, until Sakic could take advantage of a stupid team. Three straight orgs now have made losing bets on Duchene.

No one's disputing Eichel's bona fides as a top end 1C, but the medical history is a legitimate concern. If they LTIR'd him all year and tried this again next summer, I'm not sure how they could ask for the same price with a straight face - now it's 4 years of club control instead of 5, with a full year lost to a medical procedure.

Price needs to come down, and I think it will.

I think he has a no move clause kicking in next year if I remember correctly.

On my team's note they signed Corey ****ing Perry. I hate that cheap shot, diving, no good piece of ****.