TurdBurglar

TSN reported yesterday Edmonton is exploring trading Kulak and Ceci to match both offer sheets.

Not talking about Bouchard vs the Oilers, talking about who Nurse is better paired with.

Defensively, Nurse does better with Ekholm and Bouchard is behind Ceci and Desharnais according to his advanced stats.

Honestly, from watching games myself, Ceci is getting a bad wrap. A defenseman like him will never look good when the forwards don't backcheck and the ones that do can't score. Then couple that with a goalie that can't stop a beachball.

The Chiarot trade was considered an overpayment by Florida, so expecting a equal amount for an older and slower RD isn't realistic. As I said with the 3rds, that on the very low end. You could easily pull a second or even a first, if you believe Savard is worth a first, from either of those trades. As for Ceci's numbers last season, no defenseman is going to look good when the forwards don't backcheck, your defensive partner is playing like a 3rd pairing guy and the goalie can't stop a beachball. The season before, he was one of Edmonton's best defenders. For reference, in the playoffs, Ceci was a steady 2nd pair defenseman, while he rotated between Nurse, Kulak and Broberg as his defensive partner because they were all under performing.

Would having the retention spot at the deadline net more than the assets without Ceci than with Ceci + asset coming from a Ceci trade with retention? Completely hypothetical situation, if Montreal can get Ceci + 3rd for future considerations, then retain 50% to flip him for another 3rd, which is below value of what they should get. That's 2 3rds for free, well $1.6m cap space for next season. Would not making those trades and attaching the retention to Savard or Dvorak net 2 extra 3rds? I doubt it, and this is on the low end of what Ceci should net in return in this example. That's why I asked, does it matter if that last retention spot is available. If it is, great, but if you can get more assets by using it elsewhere, keeping it for the deadline shouldn't be a priority.

Montreal has the freedom to take a salary-in salary-out trade, where Edmonton does not, limiting their options. Any trade retaining salary for Ceci would limit the options they have for Dvorak or Savard. Does that matter? We don't know for sure, only can speculate.

There's always the option to flip Ceci like DeSmith last season. Although it's getting late in the offseason for such a move.

I wonder if St Louis would have made those offer sheets if it wasn’t Bowman as the GM. Can’t imagine Bowman still has the same clout as he did before he was ousted from the NHL. Could totally be unrelated.

If we can get a couple hundred games out of the players picked with those 3 picks, it's just gravy. That's not factoring in those pick being traded for a player that we can get games out of. We already got over 130 games out of Hoffman.

If Guhle's being moved, it's not for a few years. There's no short term holes in the lineup worth trading good young players right now. Guhle may very well still developed into the type of player you're describing and more.

A contender likely won't have the cap space to absorb Laine's full contract and Waddell would prefer to not retain a big portion of Laine's contract. It's a big gamble for a contender to take on that much cap space with big question marks on how much service they will actually get from him. Even with a 3 team deal to absorb cap space, now you're paying extra for the same question marks. The most likely scenario is Laine ending up on a non-contender, with no retention, for fairly cheap so he can use these last 2 years of his deal to assert he can play more than a handful of games a season.

Not sure CBJ would want Dvorak, being injury prone the last few years himself. At least Anderson they would get games out of, but they would have to hope the quality of those games are better than last year.

I don't think MB was a bad GM. When he came in, he did a lot of good things. At some point every GM faces the fact they need to do something to take the next step. Sometimes it pays off (Subban for Weber, Galchenyuk for Domi), sometimes it doesn't (Sergachev for Drouin). When things go castrophically bad (Sergachev for Drouin) it's hard to dig yourself out of that hole, which causes desperation and more high risk moves (Signing Alzner) that either make you look great or stupid. It's the natural progression of most GMs.

Heatley did the same thing to a degree, he managed to likely stay out of jail by taking a plea deal. The NHL has a long history of turning a blind eye, so it's not that surprising.

The entire idea came from you dude. You blamed me for saying it then accused me of saying you said it. This entire situation is you making shit up and now you're tossing out insults. Seriously, read the comments, it came from you and you're the one making shit up assigning blame. Now you're just flat out lying. You can't even be accountable for your own actions.

Very good. It was in response to you blaming me for shit you made up. You could try not doing that maybe?

Then stop bringing it up. Don't keep dredging shit up, making more shit up and telling me to let it go.

I didn't say you said that. This whole idea of Babcock sabotaging Vincent came from you, not that you said that's what happened, but it came from you then you implied that's what I was saying. You literally made the situation up and first tried to imply I was saying it, now saying that I'm accusing you of saying it. Nobody claimed Vincent was sabotaged, you brought up the idea that he was by CBJ. You're the one who planted the idea of a coach being affected a previous coach leaving abruptly. In the same comment none-the-less. The conversation was done, over. I responded to fanpuck and then you implied I was saying Babcock sabotaged him. I corrected it, you denied doing it. Now you're switching your stance to I said you claimed Babcock sabotaged him. Stop putting words in my mouth that's 100% coming from you. This is the second time you've done it. You've said before you don't want someone to do it to you, so stop being a hypocrite by doing it to others. That's is the real difference, you're the one who made up this sabotage narrative and keep blaming me for it. Go back through every one of my comments, I never once blamed Babcock directly for any of it. That all came from you. Stop making shit up and blaming me.

Commandant made the sabotage comment, which is what you were replying to my comment about. I understand you may not of been talking about it later, but that's the comment chain I was replying to.

The good news of that contract is if it doesn't work out, it can be buried with no cap hit.

This is where the idea came from and what we were discussing. My original post was the Babcock situation was too short lived to poison the well, then someone else started with the sabotage stuff, which is where this all got derailed.

That may of been most of your point, but you started by shoehorning in the implication. Just because you want to deflect away from it, doesn't mean you didn't do it. You were corrected, then got an attitude about it. Just be clear on what happened, regardless of what you want claim happened.

The only person that brought up Babcock sabotaging Vincent was you.

You implied I was blaming Babcock for sabotaging Vincent, which is the opposite of what I've been saying all along. For someone who doesn't like words put in their mouth, you're more than willing to do it to others. I did read what you wrote, so cut the attitude.