Despite the trades being fair, getting Fowler still leaves the Hawks in big cap troubles. Hawks likely will have to Gustafson and another cheap Dman on the roster.

I disagree, Shaw is worth way less than Fowler.

Yup same here. Shaw is a great role player who got lots of dirty goals by playing with star players. Play him on a 3rd line full time with Thompson and Cogliano and watch his production plummet. Not saying the guy sin't good, i'd take Shaw on my team any day but Fowler is just worth more by fact that he is a better overall player and can play big minutes full time. Shaw is a Depth guy, Fowler is a Core guy. Also Shaw is going to get 3m+ in his next contract so that is basically what Fowler makes now so not much of a cap saving to resign Vatanen.

thanks for the feedback. What with shaw would make it work? D prospect, picks.

In my mind it is asset management. Hawks can't resign and spend 3M+ on 6th Forward when they still need 4D. They can make the cap work for the year and see where it goes from there.

For Ducks, If they resign Vatanen and limdholm that will be 6 D making 3M+ and 5 at 4+. Seems better to use money on Forwards and trade one. Shaw puts up pts in the playoffs and has cups and grit which is something old school guy like Murray would like. He's considering bring Randy Carlyle back, so you know he isn't an analytics guy. Look at trades for Kesler and Bieska and they are loser Canucks.

I don't buy the trades with Edm that they think they get RNH for Vatanen.

You seemed to contradict yourself in team explanation. At first you said 4D was their biggest hole, then you suggested trading Seabrook, clearly one of their top 4 dmen. Although I actually agree with both thoughts!

In hindsight, I would have traded Seabrook to Dallas last year instead of Sharp and kept Johns. Also, whatever the return would have been, re-signing Oduya would have been a must. Yes, there would have been a gaping hole in Seabrook's departure but Johns did look quite comfortable and confident in his late season call up as Oduya's prime partner in Big D. I believe he would have made the Hawks out of camp this past season. Another huge hole with the Hawks was lack of LW depth. Retaining Sharp may have actually given Chicago two scoring lines instead of the one they did have. Bowman never seems to do things easy and simple. He seems to wow us all with his maneuvers when there appears to be more straight forward deals to be had.

How would that seabrook trade to Dallas have worked? He was a pending UFA on full NTC/NMC on his last deal to which they needed him to win the cup. It's not realistic to say I would have traded Seabrook because he could have easily just gone to UFA and gotten whatever price he wanted...well never know if a desperate EDM (for a vet D man with three cups) would have paid more or not.