Rejoint: mai 2015
Messages: 19,595
Mentions "j'aime": 6,735
Its official now. We're seeing a major change in the NHL.
As a GM, If you are not 100% certain to be at least willing to resign a pending UFA prior to his UFA season, trade him immediately. If you want to maximize value. Ottawa's over payment of Duchene last year was an outlier. Just like Edmontons trade of Hall was....
I don't think this is a bad trade for Ottawa. I don't think the Pacioretty trade was bad either. I think us fans have been so conditioned to think that any big name player who is about to be a pending UFA that if traded, the team trading that player can just go "I want all your best prospects, all your draft picks and 2 youngest best roster players". That was the NHL prior to the last lockout (it got less and less apparent up until that year but stuff like that happened in 80's and 90's) Stuff like that doesn't fly anymore. There aren't anymore "sweepstakes" trades.
There's also one thing people have to remind themselves of, MTL with Pacioretty and OTT with Karlsson were not regular cases. Both teams were trading from a major area of weakness. Take away the drama aspect of both scenarios and both teams would have gotten more. Maybe not three 1st's and a top prospect more, but more. Now much of both teams dramas, were the team's fault but considering how bad the press has been for both teams lately, they didn't do half bad.
Ottawa and Montreal both had players with 1 year remaining on their contracts but for all intensive purposes, it might as well have been June 30th 2019. Both guys were pending UFA's and weren't going to play a game for those teams and every team in the NHL knew this.