Quoting: Mittens
I would rather have Kubalik than Joseph for the remaining years on his contract. Its not ideal having to sweeten the pot to get someone to take Joseph but ottawa has two 1sts now anyway.
Yeah but we have bled too many assets during the rebuild (when you're supposed to cumulate them). Yes 2 firsts next year but we haven't had one in 3 years now (I don't count Boucher as a first round pick)
I would also rather have Kubalik if we didn't sign Tarasenko but now that we did, we don't need him as much
Here's a comparison I made between the 2 :
Kubalik is a pretty decent offensive player but look at the other Sens players, there won't be a lot of PP time available. Kubalik scored 17 of his 45 pts on the PP last season
Over the last 2 years, Kubalik has 51 ESP despite only missing 5 games. Joseph has 45 ES + PK pts despite missing 39 games...
So Joseph has a better scoring rate at ES (1.58 pts per 60 ES minutes vs 1.53 for Kubalik), is quite better defensively and is a TOP PK forward in the NHL.
What was Ottawa's weakness last season? 5v5, they finished 25th in GF%
Kubalik's contract (1 year vs 2.5 AAV) makes him attractive and would return a decent pick while clearing 2.5 AAV
Joseph's is a cap casualty (3 years vs 2.95 AAV) and would cost a decent pick to move