You putting Kotkaniemi on the 4th line made me look up his stats.

12 minutes a game and a 26 point pace.

Pretty brutal offer sheet failure for all the trolling Carolina did

he has an injury rap sheet longer than my physics textbook.

This made me laugh hard. Well said

KK's played very well. The issue is that he's not going to displace a PPG C like Aho or Trocheck, or the Captain in Staal. He's been very good since moving to the middle

you paid a 1st and a 3rd and 6.1 million in cap space on a team over the cap (thanks to LTIR) for a guy playing 12 minutes a night.

You can pretend all you want, but thats a disaster.

Except... it's not. Since moving to center he's scoring at a 0.75 point pace. He's 4th on the team in even-strength scoring behind only Fast, Svechnikov, and Aho. Call that a disaster if you want, but that's some success.

@littlejerryseinfeld doing his best Habs fan impression. Lol

Respectfully- the KK offer sheet shouldn’t be judged until we see his next contract. Your argument about 12 mins a night says more about the Canes depth than KK. Let me know who in the Canes top 9 you take mins away from.

You are demonstrating the argument for not doing the offersheet in the first place

A 1st a 3rd and 6.1 million when there was no need for him

No need for him…not true. Canes now have the deepest and most versatile forward group. Going to be tough in a 7 game series. 6.1M for a cheap team hurts for sure.

It's also objectively untrue when it comes to the long-term trajectory. Trocheck and Nino are both going to get huge contracts from some team this offseason. Getting Kotkaniemi early to replace one of them is quite a proactive idea, actually, and they weaponized a huge amount of otherwise-empty cap space to pull it off while Bergevin was in a bind of his own making.

The most underrated part of the move is that is maximized the LTIR space for Gardiner. Without it, 50% of the LTIR space would have been wasted