Absolutely insulting offer to Colorado. Flat out ridiculous. It doesn't help them rebuild, it makes them worse now, and it doesn't do a single thing to address their long term needs at defense. Did you even try?

Well I don't know why I respond to posts like this, but here goes.

"Insulting offer to Colorado"

Why? Three good prospects and a cap efficient Top 3 defenseman for two overpaid skaters who had horrible years last year? Landy scored 33 points last year and Duchene scored 41. Both had humiliating +/- scores, each below -20. For a pair of guys make 5.5 and 6m respectively, that's completely inexcusable. If they were on the Islanders, neither of them would've made the Top 5 in team scoring. That hurts their value a lot.

"It makes them worse now"

... Yeah that's how rebuilding trades work. You can't simultaneously improve your roster and acquire prospects. If you want to improve your talent "now", don't expect prospects,

"It doesn't do a single thing to improve our defense"

You get two young defenseman, one of whom has years of NHL experience under his belt, both of whom are stay-at-home hard hitters, both of whom are NHL ready. You gave up no defensemen going back. This drastically improves your defense.

Before I get the inevitable "they just had a bad year", imagine if I tried to trade Ladd for a big return. Ladd was down on production last year (31 points, so "Landeskog" levels of production) and gets paid 5,500,000 a year. Would you take a Ladd offer seriously just because "he used to score more" or "he has two Stanley Cups under his belt" (something neither Duchene or Landeskog can claim)? No, and no one would.

Low production/High salary players naturally have low value. Don't expect a lot in return for these two until their production goes back up.

I'm not going to get into the discussion about the Colorado trade, but I will say this about Vegas -- they know they'll get a good player from the Isles. If they set the asking price at a first round pick for a bad contract, they'll have plenty of other teams that will come calling.

A very fair point. I figured, if I was a GM, I'd rather have a 15th overall pick than Nelson, de Haan or Hickey. It helps that Kulemin's a good player in his own right (excellent penalty killer); he'd be more sought after if he made 1.5-2 mil a year.

If we lost de Haan to Vegas it wouldn't be the end of this roster. Pelech or Wotherspoon likely be at a de Haan level of skill at somepoint in the next few years. But from an Isles' GM perspective, I thought if there was any way to unload Kulemin to Vegas, I had to try. A 15th overall pick seemed like the best way to do that.

Probably wouldnt do that if it was for one or the other. Boo