Brian Burke famously said that any given time your team should be racing towards the top or racing towards the bottom. Grier is doing a fantastic job at racing towards the bottom.

with 3 retained contracts for the next 2/4/7 years... no more room for error, plus a lot of cap tied up degrading ELC values IF they hit

Not a sharks fan obviously, but I’m shocked they used that retention spot on Hertl. Burns and EK, ok I get it…would have bet money to would have been on Couture.

yeah i mean san jose fans knew they were gonna be bad for a while so they're probily not changing their tune too much. it's the rest of the league fans who should hate them for giving vegas another top players for pennies and retained.

They'll just have to compensate a 3rd team to retain salary for them. It has proven to not be very expensive.

Honest question because I’m lazy to do the research myself - what are other examples of 3 year retentions on big contracts?

Kuzy was just done for a 3rd for basically 1.25 years and VERY different circumstances

Shouldn't need to retain for that return, but whatever now. Should've been in the offseason, not get on your knees to a rival to help them for a playoff run with a mediocre return.
The KK for VV trade is wild considering next years 3.4m cap hit. Guess that's to help for the cap floor, but would've expected some value in taking that on. Same with Kostin.
The Ohk trade seems worthless too, why not keep the guy as a 7/8 D.
Only happy with we get at least one of Celibrini/Hagens and use all the cap space to take on bad contracts in the offseason for assets.

Phil Kessel was traded from Toronto to Pittsburgh with significant retention. There was 7 years remaining on his contract at the time.

Me pointing out Kuzy might have been dumb in my comment 😂. I meant a third term. Kessel to Pens was retained by Leafs directly.

I'm sure a team would be happy to retain salary if they're compensated well for it. If San Jose can trade Couture for multiple 1st round picks, why wouldn't they be willing to put up a couple 2nds for 3 years of ~$2M in retention.

I think the fact that Couture has a 28-team no trade clause is what's preventing them from ever being able to trade him.

This TDL has taught me that the player values in these trades on Capfriendly have very little relationship to actual trade values. At least if Mike Grier is your GM.

I would never have considered retaining on Hertl.
Why did SJ send two 3rds to LV?

The 1st and Edstrom for Hertl seems right, but not the retention and the two 3rds.

I thought Kahkonen was worth a 3rd or even a 2nd. Taking back cap dump Vanecek should have increased the Shark's return. We got a 7th and an injured $3.4M Vanecek for Kahkonen? I thought Kahkonen was our most valuable UFA.

Okhotiuk is worth more than a 5th. We needed to ckear up the logjam on D but why trade a young developing player instead of a veteran? Give him time to develop.Sharks management said that Okhotiuk was an important part of the return for Meier, then they ditched him for a 5th after 1 year.

Barabanov was untradeable? I thought he was wirth a 2nd at the beginning of the season, maybe a 4th at the TDL.

I thought Simek was untradeable and Duclair was only worth a 3rd. Pleasantly surprised by thise two trades.

Maybe Grier got Los Gatos native Cooley confused with Gilroy native Wolf. Would much rather have Wolf. Obviously.

Disappointing TDL. Horrific season.

Sad to see Hertl go. Fun must be always. He will have more fun in LV than SJ for sure.