Rust has a full NMC. He won't waive it.

That Bruins deal is actually pretty reasonable

Probably not, but no one can say that with 100% certainty.

I don't see the Caps giving a second to their biggest rival to give up a bad contract.

My philosophy is do the trade if it helps regardless of whether rival or not, but I understand they probably don't think that way. Honestly respect the Caps after all the series, always more fun when they played them in 2nd round.

It seems like the caps aren’t really interested in giving up a sweetener along with mantha and the most recent reports make it sound like he’s gonna get a shot with the caps next season under a new coach. I still couldn’t see the caps A) moving mantha to the penguins and B) attaching the 40th pick to him for nothing in return. A 2024 3rd is probably as much as I’d personally want to give up in a pure dump scenario.

Fair. I think Mantha still has some value in the right system.

I’m hoping now that he’s gonna be under Carbery, it’ll be a different story this year. Fingers crossed. He’d probably tear the caps up if he was in Pittsburgh

What's the outlook on the caps this year? Hoping we have one great series left between us, but I think it may be time for both teams to start the rebuilds soon. Will be interesting, happy to give the Pens one more shot to contend, but I think if things are bad by deadline than we probably sell and start rebuild.

After our GM said there would be an aggressive retool, we are pretty much running it back with a couple of young players plugged in. Kuzy will stay, Mantha will stay, no upgrade in the top 6. We needed the retool.

However, when healthy last year we were on pace for 49 wins. The team was dominant in December when most of the team was healthy.

If we stay healthy, we will make the playoffs and unless a few players have big bounce backs we will need a lot of luck to make a run.