Comments on: What’s it going to take? by Zackman35

By: Racki

Racki — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:02:25 +0000

I think you have to also look at it from our side though too.. that’s a hell of a lot of salary for the Oilers to take on. Won’t happen while Horcoff, Gilbert and Khabibulin are here, unfortunately. I can see one of them being moved, but would be hard to free up $14M for us. We have deep pockets, but there is only so much cap space.

I would definitely love to have both though, but it wouldn’t last long.. don’t forget that Eberle, Hall and Paajarvi get new contracts by July 1st, 2013, and then the Nuge on July 1st, 2014.

On the plus side, we might lose Hemsky’s $4.1, and Smyth’s $6.25 will likely be reduced a fair bit (I think he’ll retire here). But it still gets dicey. I haven’t done the math though, but that’s a lot of money to tie up in 2 players, plus our big 3 forwards will get huge money soon. Would have to be pretty stingy with the rest of the team! I would definitely love for the Oilers to be able to do it though.

By: Dman09

Dman09 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:00:15 +0000

My thinking was if both players are holding off contract discussions and considering between the two you are looking at a possible 14+million in salary, that doesn’t give the team a lot to work with for trying to improve the team when they don’t really know what their cap situation is going to be. Also if they get the feeling that neither is going to be willing to sign they may want to try and get what they can for them. I think the biggest draw to the deal is the likely hood of a lotto pick. If that pick turned into Yakupov I think they would be very happy. If they wanted a Potter or Whitney in there I would still work over the deal to have those two.

By: Racki

Racki — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:52:23 +0000

I would have to assume that the Preds would never trade both, but they’ve got some D depth there. So maybe we could pry one or the other, plus a Blum or Josi, or Ellis or something. We’d have to pay quite a bit to do it though, cause they shouldn’t be too inclined to give up the young cheap guys.

By: Dman09

Dman09 — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 17:11:18 +0000

Well here is what I say. Hemsky(=1st +prospect), O’mark, Peckham, Plante/Chorney and 2012 1st rounder + 2nd rounder for both Weber and Sutter. If you need to you can bump that 2nd up to another 1st or just make is a conditional. Thats basically equicalent to 2 first rounders (one being a lotto likely) 4 prospects and an additional pick of a 1st or second. I think that is pretty fair value for Weber and Sutter and if they want to add a couple more guys to the mix like Sutton,Barker to fill in the gaps then throw them in for free.

By: Racki

Racki — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 16:07:50 +0000

Thanks for yet another quality guest post, Zack.

The thing is, usually (except when Mad Mike is involved) a GM is making a trade to get something out of it, obviously. BUT it’s not always a good player they’re trying to get out of it. Some teams just want to dump off salary. You have your habitual losers like the Islanders that are frequently drafting great players and then shipping them off elsewhere because they don’t want to pay top dollar. The same happens to a lot of the small market teams. It’s all about knowing when you have a team behind the eight ball, and offering them something that will help fix their financial situation while giving them a glimmer of hope for the future.

So for me, I think we can target the Predators and not have to break apart our big 3 at all to get Weber.

Assets I would use in any trade for a big name D-man:
Linus Omark, Ales Hemsky, Tyler Pitlick, Ryan Martindale, Curtis Hamilton, Ryan Whitney, Taylor Chorney, Alex Plante, Colten Teubert, Eric Belanger, Cam Barker, our first rounder in 2012 (would completely lower any other pieces we’d have to package with it), our 2013 1st rounder, any other picks.

Really, we have a lot to work with here. BTW, before anyone thinks I’m crazy, I didn’t mean packaging all those guys for one guy like Weber. I mean, that’s the better pieces we could draw from (plus more, for the right price).

There are lots of players who could be on the table. I think our fans can commonly undervalue our worth here as much as some people overvalue it. We have a fairly deep farm system… just many of our players won’t be ready for 2-3 years. We don’t have the patience for it, but there are other teams out there that have made a name for themselves for being the rest of the NHL’s development teams.

We can definitely make a trade for Weber, or Suter, or other big name guys. I have no doubt about that. Suter is also holding out in Nashville because he wants to see what the Predators will do to improve the team there (to show commitment from GM) before signing. The team may not be willing to do that.

It’s all about taking advantage of a team at the right time