Dallas and Montreal are two teams at different stages. Although they haven’t said they want to go through a full rebuild, they’ve also traded away Weber Toffoli Chariot and Lehkonen. Hughes also said he wanted to trade Petry. All these signs show that they want to younger.

Dallas on the other hand haven’t shown any signs of retooling or rebuilding. With good young pieces already in the NHL and key veterans such as Pavelski Benn and Seguin (yes overpaid), they seem to want to continue to compete for a playoff spot and acquire talent that can be brought into the equation immediately.

This is a type of deal that can fill both teams need, where Montreal gets cap relief and futures, while Dallas gets a top 4 Dman where a 3 year deal isn’t as risky in comparison to the 7-8 year deals that get given out consistently (Eg. Lindholm for Boston).

But it is risky when you're about to pay J-Rob and Oettinger...Say those two get around $12 mil (based on bridge $7 for J-Rob and $5 x term for Oettinger). That leaves approximately $7 mil in cap space. You add Petry, but subtract Dobie for 1 year ($3.2 mil, leaves you with approximately $3.8 mil in space).

Now you've got a roster of 18 players, $3.8 mil in cap space, and haven't actually improved the lineup. You also leave yourself in a situation where you've got a total of $20 mil in space for 2023-24, with only 11 players signed. Doesn't really lend itself well to an actual upgraded lineup.

Regarding Linholm though-He'll be 35 in the last year of his deal. You buy prime years knowing that the aging curve works the same way for 99% of players. Again, like I said above, there's always a chance that some dummy does something dumb, I just don't think that Dallas is as easy of a target as the consistent "Petry to Dallas" threads seem to think.

I never said they were good to finish. I said they struggled to start and a big reason was Jeff. They specifically were tanking to end the season with players hurt and traded, kids were called up. As soon as Lehkonen, Kulak, Chiarot left, their depth cratered. Weird to quote me there. Besides the point. The year absolutely sucked and they need a restart but the idea that Jeff is declining was the point. He's noi\t by every metric.