Quoting: warrenbuffetwho
Depth in the terms that he is not deserving of a top 4 D title/price tag, not that he can hold his own in all situations. Varlamov is 4-12 this season, 33 years old, and is being rumoured to be on the block with Sorokin looking like the future of the franchise. He is not a top goalie in the league so again I am confused as to how you think a 1st, a 3rd, a prospect, a solid Depth D, and a historically strong Goaltender are "peanuts". I can repeat the question again, what is your fair value for these two assets?
Bringing up a goalie's W/L record is really not a useful metric to assess a goalie's production - the Islanders scored 27 goals in Varly's first 14 starts(3-10-1). Is it necessarily his fault he took all those Ls when his team wasn't even giving him 2 goals a game in support? Or, to flip it, you could say that Mrazek is 10-6-0 this season - why would you even think of trading him for Varlamov??
Varly's numbers also take a hit because he was coming off surgery this offseason and missed the entire preseason and all of October, and was rusty as hell when he came back. Since December, though, he's put up a .922 SV%, which isn't far off from how he did in 35 starts last year (.929 SV%, 2.04 GAA) - again, a season when he was top 5 in Vezina voting. Just because Sorokin has become a better option for the Islanders doesn't mean they have to just dump Varlamov ASAP for whatever they can get for him.
As far as fair value, I think that you have to understand where the Islanders would be coming from. Everything the coach and GM have said recently point to them looking at this season as an aberration - something that's easy to understand, considering the 13 game road trip to start the year, the multiple different stretches of time off because of COVID postponements, and then finishing their season with 50 games in 99 days - so all signs point to the Islanders planning on a return to contention next season. Mayfield & Varlamov's cap hits are affordable for a team that isn't facing a cap crunch (the only "must-sign" contract they have is RFA Noah Dobson) so there's no issue keeping both players around for 2022-23. In fact, they really don't have any RD prospects close to NHL readiness, so Mayfield is a little more valuable to them - if they have to sign someone to replace him, they're either getting a worse player at a similar cap hit, or a similar player at a worse cap hit. I've said that they should put a price tag of a 1st or a 2nd and a strong prospect on both guys because of the lack of a need to trade them.
Holmberg & a 1st would be fine for Varlamov in this deal (I think upgrading a 2nd to a 1st for a year+ of $2M retention is fair). That leaves Mrazek, Dermott, and a 2024 3rd for the Mayfield part of the trade, which is a big fat no. Dermott is a worse player with a cap hit that's actually slightly higher than Mayfield's, so he doesn't bring much value. Mrazek is also negative value to this trade - his numbers are just bad and this is the second straight year he's missed a significant amount of time with injuries (and it's not like these injuries are a new development in his career, either.) He's got two more years at $3.8M, which kind of defeats the idea behind moving Varlamov for the Islanders - he's paid too much to be a backup to Sorokin, and Mrazek is only getting a little bit less per year. Mrazek's contract also carries into 2023-24, which *IS* going to be a cap concern year for the Islanders, as both Mat Barzal and Oliver Wahlstrom are going to need new contracts.