when playoffs come nyquist will be healthy whare is th 5.5 mil cap space gonna come from?

The salary cap quits being a factor once the last game of the regular season is played. They activate him for the playoffs.

NSH will need more than that for all of what you have there. Considering how much McCabe just went for, Ekholm will go for more. Take out McKegg, swap Schaefer for Holloway or Broberg and we'll keep TBL's 5th and Trenin. Then we are talking, but I think they could still ask for more.

Preds deal isn’t close at all

McKegg's in there to keep the number of contracts equal. He'll be headed to the Admirals anyways, so let's redirect the focus to what matters.

McCabe is cheaper, younger, equally as effective, and comes with less injury history than Ekholm does. Let's meet in the middle and say his excess value in comparison to Ekholm can be negated by the fact that Chicago sold LOW on their assets and that the two should be fetching a return slightly better than what Chicago received.

The 2023 1st outweighs the 2025 1st significantly based on the quality of the two drafts and the immediacy in which Nashville receives the asset. That is excess value in Nashville's favour compared to the McCabe deal. Nothing close to Schaefer's talent made it's way to Chicago in that deal: he's a legitimate B-prospect whereas Anderson is an AHL tweener and Gogolev did not make Toronto's top-15 prospect list (The Athletic, Scott Wheeler). I think any Predators fan wins the argument that the difference between a 2025 3rd and 2026 2nd, while miniscule, exists. I'd love to know why you think Nashville needs more out of this deal as the quality of pieces returned is vastly eclipsing what Toronto paid for McCabe. The Predators are only retaining $1M more than Chicago did over the life of the deal.

There is a difference of value between Yamamoto and Trenin. Again, using quick and reliable numbers, I'll use GSVA numbers from Dom Luszczyszyn's 2022-23 player cards as a baseline metric as the two players accomplish two different things. Yamamoto has a GSVA of 0.9 while Trenin has a score of 0.2. All I value from Trenin's game is his cap hit and PK abilities.

The market for backup goalies hasn't been established this season, but history says we can expect something in range of a fourth round pick.

Again, looking to GSVA for a really surface-level look at the assets being exchanged, I'll break down the trade further:

McKegg - 0.0 GSVA
Schaefer - 2.7 GSVA
Yamamoto - 0.9 GSVA
2023 1st - 3.7 GSVA
2025 3rd - 0.5 GSVA
Total: 7.8 GSVA

Ekholm - 1.2 GSVA
Lankinen - 0.9 GSVA
Trenin - 0.2 GSVA
2023 5th - 0.2 GSVA
2025 7th - 0.2 GSVA
Total: 2.7 GSVA

I've made three assumptions in this calculation: Schaefer's value is equivalent to the pick he was drafted with last year, Edmonton's 2025 3rd is the last of the 2025 third round, and Nashville's 7th is the first pick of that round. We could even go on a limb and double Ekhom's value in this scenario to factor in the retention. Nashville still walks away with double the value they put into the deal.

I don't know what else Predators fans want. There's no dead cap going back to Nashville and every key piece one could want from a retooling team is there. Your ask for one of Holloway or Broberg is ridiculous.



See above.

It can be ridiculous but these deals happen all the time around the deadline. Teams that feel they are a piece away go out and overpay.

Great, making the extremely pro-Nashville concession that he's worth twice what the Athletic ranks him as, Edmonton still returns double the value back to Nashville for this package.

Saying a team declines a deal and your only defense coming by way of "acquiring teams always overpay for assets at the deadline" is a pretty piss weak argument when you're claiming it in light of evidence above.

Not what the caps are looking for

First off, impressive write up. Also, I agree with you, this is a very premium trade, and NSH would do that deliberately, but to get to middle ground. Here is how I'm seeing the trade in its individual components

1. Ekholm at 1.25mil retained for Schaefer and 2023 first.
2. Lankinen for EDM 2025 3rd
3. Trenin, 2023 TBL 5th for Yamamoto.
4. NSH 2025 7th for McKegg

McKegg, I will agree is whatever for the sake of contracts, so the 7th is whatever.

Starting with Ekholm. I am running on the assumption that EDM's 2023 first is very likely to be a late in the first round draft pick, as I'm not anticipating EDM to make a first round exit. If Ekholm has no retention at all, then I would be fine with this deal, given how close Schaefer's selection was to the first round. However with 1.25 mil retained I would like to see a little more on the return, because it isn't nothing and we are still paying for our experiment with Turris. I'm also under the assumption that there needs to be some retention to make the deal happen, so seeing a little more is what I'm after due to the retention.

Next, moving to Lankinen. You are right, back-up goalies and goalies in general haven't been established. However, NSH has no issues hanging onto and extending Lankinen to let Askarov continue to develop with starter minutes in the AHL. Trading him now would force NSH to go to the market and get someone to back up Saros, as we have seen historically Saros needs a backup. A 2025 3rd would normally be fine, but but given EDM's goalie situation currently, we'd let Lankinen go, but for a bit of a premium because it creates work for NSH and EDM really needs it.

Lastly Trenin and the 5th. Trenin just became more valuable to NSH with the departure of Jeannott as there isn't a lot of quality penalty killing forwards left on the team. So for the very reason EDM values him, NSH does too. Also, like Lankinen, we don't really need to seperate and while Yamamoto's contract isn't a dump, it is more than Trenin's current cap hit through the same time (1.7 mil compared to 3.1 mil). Because of this I have more issue with the 5th than Trenin. I'm not going to handover a pick for a player I don't need as the current is still valuable. To get Trenin, I would want to see a pick headed NSH's way instead. It would say the WSH 2023 4th or EDM's 2024 2nd

The suggestion of Broberg/Holloway comes in replacement of upgrading picks, but either situation would be fine.

So save for the auxiliary pieces I suppose I was close.