Quoting: MajesticWalrus
Ned was playing about the same and better when it mattered at the end of the season so not a downgrade when hes made to be number one and Fleury is a future hall of famer who makes great key saves even if he's having a bad statistical game cause he's just a franchise superstar goalie like that.
NMC and NTC doesnt mean someone can't be traded just that they have to accept where they're going and it's not even public information as to who's on their listsbor who they'd verbally agree to go to. Fleury im sure would love to come back to Pittsburgh too. Personally i think the marner contract could be worth it and it could give us a bit of hope once our other future hall of famers retire in a few years from now
Ned was great for the first half of that win streak, but I think he looked overworked by the end of it. A lot of those games were won because the Pens scored ~4.1 goals/game for the last 18 games, when their average for the entire season was 3.1 goals/game. But that's not the goalie downgrade I was talking about. Fleury had an .895 SV% and allowed 9.21 goals above expected, according to Evolving-Hockey. That is a couple steps down from both Nedeljkovic and Jarry: By EH's model, that was the 6th worst GSAx in the entire NHL.
And I bring up Seeler and Fleury's NTC and NMC with the context of just being given to them. Like you said, it means they need to allow the trade. I brought them up because I don't think either of them will waive either clause. Both just signed a new deal with their teams, and they're going to approve a trade before playing a single game of it? I doubt it.
On the Marner issue, I think a contract of that size would prevent us from making the best possible depth improvements, which has been the Pens' Achilles Heel since we won our cups. Sure, he's a superstar. But we don't need any more of those. The way our roster is currently constructed, that $11M is better spent on a pair of guys; Skjei and DeBrusk, Monahan and Tarasenko, something along those lines.