Holtby take

My question is to Caps fans: how can you be certain that Grubauer can handle a starting role? All these trade offers remind me of when CHI fans were going wild trading Crawford at peak value and replacing him with Darling. Now Darling is seriously underperforming and getting paid 4.15m for 3 more years. And CHI blows bc they lost Crawford to injury.

I think you're lucky to have Holtby - he's consistently a great starter and he's having a down year which he will almost undoubtedly bounce back from. It might be better to trade Gruby - he's at peak value right now and he could be someone else's problem at 3.5m x 4 years if he can't handle the starting job. Then, Samsonov replaces Holtby if he's ready.

Not saying I disagree and I am not a caps "fan' but just wanted to show a realistic value for him.

I appreciate your attempt to provide us a voice of reason, and I agree that with Grubauer overperforming expectations, it makes more sense to trade Grubauer unless a fantastic offer comes along.

However, if your argument is that the Hawks shouldn't have made a huge trade, to get back loads of talent for Crawford, because now his career might be over, and they are loads of talent short of the playoffs, then it sounds to me like they should have traded Crawford.

The Caps have three prospects who might each be good enough to play twenty NHL games next year (Vanecek whom they drafted after a surprise silver medal in a WJC, Copley whom they traded in a package for Oshie, and traded back for, and Samsonov, their recent first round pick who did okay as a starter this year in the KHL, and of course Grubuaer has played 34 games this year and done well. If they take advantage of waiver exemptions and injury replacements, and play whoever's hot, they just need a free agent to play about thirty games, decently, and that shouldn't cost more than about 1.2m. Holtby's cap hit of 6.1 might go up in a couple more years, and it would be worth it for a team that wants a solid starting goalie, who has 33 wins this year. I think the Caps are concerned with how to beat the Penguins, who have knocked them out of the last couple playoffs with insane forward depth, so saving 4.9M or so in goal seems like a way to add a good forward, or keep John Carlson.

Good point about Grubauer, but I think fans are reasoning that they probably can't sign Carlsson unless they move out a large contract, and with Holtby being outplayed this year and Samsonov coming over this summer, he seems like an obvious candidate for a trade. I don't think they are saying that Grubauer is better than Holtby, but a cheaper (just-about-as-good) placeholder until the heir-apparent takes the reins. This way they can retain Carlsson too.

Injuries are unpredictable, you can't use the current knowledge of his injury to justify that Crawford should've been traded at the time. That's not really fair.

If you think you can piece together a group of goalie prospects, a backup, and a UFA and achieve the same success you would with Holtby, I'd argue that his trade value can't be that high. By that logic, couldn't the Isles just ride the hot hand of Greiss/Soderstrom/Chris Gibson/cheap UFA - that way they can keep a rising player like Beauvillier and use their ~8th overall pick to grab an impactful prospect?