All in, but blowing up at the same time

Meh. I like my trades but I think that my FA signings need a little work.

Trades are fine for Washington, except that 2nd in the Orpik deal. They'll get that when they flip him at the deadline. Throw in a couple prospects you don't see making the jump soon, and it'll have more value to Arizona.

If you're throwing in a 2nd you can get a decent player back.

Which is important because you only signed one of Green or Grabner with 6M of cap space alloted. Market forces will tell you which, but I think there's more demand at defense, so it's Grabner. But you should also take Beagle's cap hit and some of Grabner's to lock up Madison Bowey for as long as he's okay with, because Niskanen is awesome but over thirty, and Karlson is only effective on days he can get his skates on over the casts.

If you want to sign Tavares for 77M, and he's cool with it, and you're not signing John Carlson, trade John Carlson for the right to defray Tavares' cap hit over eight years, which only the Islanders can do. This gets him down to, like, 9.9M? And you're back to being able to afford one of Beagle or Bowey.

I was going with 7@$11M or do the trade like you were doing and go 8@$10M. One issue is the assumption that the Islanders want Carlson for that kind of $, so I just skipped it.

I feel that the Caps will have to pay "dearly" in order to dump Orpik's salary on someone (if not taking a bad contract back too) and I didn't want to take cap hit back.

I actually don't want Green... That was more toss a bone to the fans kind of thing.