you are 2m over the cap once he is healthy in January and that is an overpay

0 interest in Thomson and Välimäki, definitely not retaining 18% for that

Doesn't seem like a trade Ottawa should be looking to make.

A+

You can send all the extra players down and make it work. Plus who knows what will happen in 4 months with injuries. I wanted to overpay especially considering retention to avoid that conversation.

4 first round picks (2 forwards and 2 defence) plus another first for retention. Especially when you consider if you don’t know if he’ll play this year seems pretty fair to me…

Theres 2 d that we dont want/need and about 9 million in retention that we dont want. So drop the d and the retention and add a short term cap dump.

Not a thing, stop thinking like that, that was never the asking price. The Sabres need forward prospects, Dmen mean nothing other than putting the onus on Buffalo to trade those D prospects for the assets they actually need. Which means your making Adams do more work and creating more risk with each subsequent trade, therefore, defensemen are a negative value

I personally wouldn't mind it. Monahan could be a good stop gap and if he bounces back, could up his value so Ottawa could get a decent return at next year's trade deadline.

Lassi Thomson is the only valuable piece here and one Ottawa could afford to move. Kastelic is a 4th line center prospect, a 3rd is a 3rd and Sens have had plenty of recent picks and still have plenty. Tierney is gone after the season anyway, with retention he's maybe worth a 3rd too

The package is like Thomson + 3rd + 3rd + 5th




Your whole explanation makes a lot of sense until that last part. That's not how value work. Buffalo has a choice, they can either trade Eichel for need or for value, or a mix of both. It's like at the draft, are you going to pick based on needs or BPA (value) ? Most people think trading for value is the way to go and taking a lesser offer to fill more needs might not be.

When Ottawa traded Erik Karlsson, they got pretty much only forwards back, even though the crying need was D-men. They went for value and adressed D-men needs with picks/signings/other trades (still a work in progress)

It makes more sense when you factor in Buffalo already has 8 dmen under the age of 23 that are pretty highly touted prospects and at least 5 of them are better than both Thomson and Valimaki, and almost all of them are LD, which means they have to move those 2 from the get go.

I get that but personally don't think that's a good idea for a rebuilding team, think it's much wiser to just keep and develop Thomson rather then trade him off for Monahan in the hopes Monahan can be flipped for a better return.

Yeah but how can I explain shortly? They don't really need to keep on rebuilding. Now it's time to improve and start being in the race to make the playoffs (aka bubble team). They would have actually made them last season if they were ready to start the year but poor personnel decisions, poor coaching decisions, 50% roster turnover once again and no pre-season made them have a terrible start (2-12-1). They were a playoffs team after that first disastrous month

Sens are now stacked at several positions (mainly LD, LW, G and even at center, they are better than people think with Norris/Pinto/Greig/White/Ostapchuk/Daoust). They could use a veteran stop gap Center, particularly with White injured for months

They are not stacked at RD but IMO Thomson won't be more than a #4/5. He has a pretty good skillset and seems to be ready to learn but his hockey IQ is not high enough to become a Top-3 D-man... I wouldn't mind selling him now

Stutzle-Norris-Batherson
Formenton-Monahan-Brown
Paul-Pinto-Ennis
Sanford-Tierney-Watson

It's wasting Pinto's talent a bit but it's his rookie season and he doesn't have to have one of the biggest roles on the team right away. I'm sure that line would find ways to be decently productive

This trade wouldn't be "in the hopes Monahan can be flipped for a better return" but more to have a good veteran STOP GAP who could return the same investment or better after using him.

I understand the logjam, I was pretty much only arguing about "defensemen are a negative value".

Ottawa has a bit of the same "logjam problem" on LD, which is why you see Brannstrom in many proposals. They don't want him on RD for technical reasons and he will always be behind Chabot and Sanderson on LD. The problem is that he's an offensive D-man who will need ice time to express his talent.

While we're here, can you give me a ranking of these 8 guys you're talking about and their potential? Thanks

Dahlin - Top Pair NHLer
Power - Top Pair NHLer
Jokiharju - 2nd pair NHLer
Samuelsson - 2nd Pair NHLer
Bryson - Bottom 4 NHLer
Johnson - Bottom 4 shutdown NHLer
Laaksonen - Possible bottom 4 NHLer, has made a lot of strides and this year is make or break
Novikov - 18 and playing for Dynamo Moskow in the KHL and putting up good numbers