Buppy

He'll still be a RFA unless the Avs (or whoever owns his rights at the time) fails to qualify him. If he's puts up anywhere near 75 points next year that will be a given.

FYI, Sproul and Ouellet are already signed. $925k each, ELC max with no bonuses. Granlund's salary is only $900k. He just has potential bonuses pumping up his cap hit.

Except we already did it twice before our current try, and most of our losses came from retirement rather than trades.

Just turned 26 actually. He should be ahead. Problem is he should be a lot ahead. Should be better than Ericsson by now. This is his 6th pro season and 3rd in the NHL. It's only Ericsson's 4th full year in the NHL. You expect better development from a 19th pick. We already have to worry about growing pains with Smith and Lashoff, and a #2 man who's really nothing more than a decent #4, and Q not scoring... I appreciate your optimistic viewpoint, and I'm not saying our current group is terrible, but I think we need more than a swap for a couple equal RH's in order to be set.

Really? I thought I made it sound like a joke...

I agree. If that same hit happens in the crease it's usually not a penalty. Had it happened immediately after the goalie interference it's likely just 2 min. Being that it happened well after and away from the play, and with Dallas being down 5-1, I think it warrants a 10-min misconduct. Nothing more. Sad that Jones died, though. Guess you shouldn't play hockey if you're made out of fine china.

Colorado matching was the best-case scenario for the Flames, and it's still worse than not making the offer at all as they've now given a division rival one of their best players back. And people here complain about Kenny...

$64.3M

While I'm not surprised, and my first thought was that they would match, a 1st and a 3rd (especially what should be mid-round or higher in a suposedly deep draft) is hardly "nothing". I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have to settle for less if and when they do trade him. That QO number is going to drive his value down, and he's already proven to be difficult. Any sophomore slump and they'll be lucky to get a 2nd.

Yeah, I didn't think of the QO aspect. They have to let him go. Then again, if one GM is dumb enough to make the offer, I wouldn't be surprised if another is dumb enough to match. True, but the goal isn't to steal another team's RFA. If you're trying to build a competetive hockey team, you have to realize the terms will be just as painful for you. I doubt many GMs would trade a 1st and a 3rd for O'Reilly even if they could pay him a fair salary. Maybe if they expect to make the conference finals or better. Calgary's 1st alone will probably be a better player. It will be hilarious if it ends up being 1st overall.

Retarded overpayment. Avs will probably match anyway, though I'd rather have a 1st and a 3rd. Flames still won't be good.

Packaging White and Kindl together probably doesn't work. Few if any teams are going to want two roster defenseman, and even if they did they'd likely be sending just a forward back (and maybe a throw-away d-man). In that case I'd want either a nice upgrade over Flip or an equivalent player plus a decent pick. I doubt anyone would bite on that. Replacing White with a pick or prospect would be better for most teams. Kindl is an RFA, which is basically the same as being under contract. He won't get much of a raise and no one will make any offers for him, so he's a pretty safe acquisition. Still not going to get anything too exciting, unless we use our 1st-rounder and it looks to be top-10 (and if that's the case, I'd rather keep the pick). A good stay at home defenseman plus a tweener top-6 forward or some kind of prospect would be a likely return. Something like Hejda + O'Reilly might make sense for both sides, assuming the Avs are willing to trade with us. They get immediate help on offense and rid themselves of a player they seem unable to sign; we get a younger version of Flip and immediate help on defense. Use a draft pick to balance it out, depending on how sour the relationship is between them and O'Reilly and how much touble they'd have filling Hejda's role. Probably conditional as well, based on our signing of O'Reilly and their signing Flip.

Regardless of Flip's contract or the playoff expectations of any other team, Flip plus any of our picks and prospects aren't likely to return a player like Bobby Ryan. But an older player, particularly if they are also in the last year of their contract and/or not currently performing well (Iginla) could be possible. But that kind of deal wouldn't really make sense for us. Any team looking for help at forward, particularly at center, would be interested in Flip. Being in the last year of his deal lowers his value, but it doesn't eliminate it altogether. What would make the most sense for us would be Flip + defenseman (plus maybe a pick or prospect) for a better defenseman. That kind of deal could work with anyone that has a deep defense. I don't know if any teams would be a good fit for that, Columbus maybe, though I doubt they'd give up Johnson. Wis, Tyutin, or Nikitin wouldn't interest me all that much. Also, teams looking to shed salary or part ways with an under-performing player could have some interest. Again, I don't know if there are any good fits around the league, but there might be. Probably not a situation that works for us, since that would usually be an older player, but you never really know who might be available. But I'd agree that he won't be moved at all.

I would be pretty surprised if they signed that low on the open market. I think you greatly underestimate the potential idiocy of GMs. There are a lot of teams with a lot of cap space. 25 teams with $10M+ and 18 with $15M+. While those teams do have to sign several players, many of them will be cheap players filling out the bottom of the roster. Then you have amnesty buyouts possibly creating even more space. There will be a few teams sitting on a big pile of cap space looking to make a headline signing. Players don't care about cap hits, they care about actual salary. They care about term, which is now limited. Parise is making $71M his first seven seasons, with big bonuses early, and has the security of another $27M for the last six years. Perry and Getzlaf won't get the security, and they'll be 35 at that time, so I wouldn't think they'd be very eager to give up the big paychecks now. I wouldn't be at all suprised to see a $10M cap hit for either one, especially if a lot of the second tier players sign before the UFA period opens.

Your math is off. With the deals you listed we're left with around $5.3M in cap space. Not that it matters though, there are no elite defensemen available. May not even be any good ones by the time July 1st arrives. Chances of a trade aren't much, if any, better. Decline is, and always has been, inevitable. You can't rebuild through free agency.

Actually, Lashoff already has White's spot. Kindl would need to go to create a spot for someone new, unless we plan on carrying 8 D. I wouldn't be surprised if Kindl does go, just pointing out that we already have 7 D either signed or RFA. Of course, Cola's spot will likely open up sometime in the pre-season...

Not bad for an undrafted free agent.

4. Give a guy with no future here a chance to catch on with another team.

Yes, of course it depends on what you get in return. Same goes for any player. He's not so much "off-limits" as "probably not going to bring a return that actually makes us better". We may not be good enough that that should be much of a concern though, so trading him for a pick might be a good option.

The grades are the probability of reaching the projected potential. Bodin's only projected at a 5.5, which means 3rd/4th-line forward. He's huge and supposedly a decent skater, physical, with good hockey sense, which is pretty much all it takes to play that role. That type of role tends to translate easier to higher levels. What they're saying is Bodin could end up somewhere between borderline 3rd-liner and borderline NHL-er. For Nyquist they say 1st-liner and possible all-star to 3rd liner. Basically, Nyquist's floor is higher than Bodin's ceiling. But HF seems pretty lazy with their grades. Seems about 2/3rds are C's, and handful get B's, and the rest D's.

Regardless of what Hudler may have been offered, the fact is he wasn't on the 09-10 team. His hypothetical salary wouldn't have helped pay for Hossa. His salary in the two years he was here was $2.875M, which would have allowed Hossa plus around $1.5M to replace Hudler. Might have evened out in 10-11, but last year Franzen and Hudler combined for 54 goals. Hossa only had 29, same as Franzen. Chances of getting 25 goals (and a few assists) for $1.5M are slim. And again, letting Quincey walk for picks was never an option, since Quincey never signed an offer sheet.

You have to be realistic. You can't stay at the level we were at forever. It isn't possible. That so many fans are too young to remember the time before we reached that level is all the more reason to accept it now. Having a realistic goal like just making the playoffs this year doesn't mean we'll always be satisfied with that. But sometimes, most times if history is any indication, you have to get bad before you find the right pieces to get good again.

Better player, sure, but hardly impactful enough to call it a huge mistake. Goal production has been similar. Hossa has more assists, but also would have created a bigger cap problem in those first two years. Better defensively, yet he's been on the ice for a lot more goals against. Kills penalties, but Chicago's PK has been even worse than ours prior to this year. Their PP has been bad as well. They've finished behind us in the standings the past two years and lost twice in the first round. They're playing great now, and look capable fo winning a Cup, but it's not because they have Hossa instead of Franzen. Over the life of their deals, Hossa will very likely produce more, but it's hard to quantify the impact of the extra cap hit. If we spend the next several years a couple million under the cap that choice will look worse, but if we spend to the cap who's to say.

He's a rookie who can be sent down without losing him. If we had to waive him to send him down, you can be sure it would be someone else on the way out. Remember Datsyuk only scored 35 points as a rookie. Hank only 44. Franzen 16. Flip scored 23 points in his first 105 NHL games. Even if you assume Nyquist is a star in the making it's still unlikely that he'd be so good as a rookie that it would be worth losing another player over. We don't have Brett Hull to play with him on the 4th line, and we already have one rookie in the top 6. He's not a center nor a physical player. We're not going to waste development time by keeping him up to sit in the pressbox. Probably not a good idea to put him in a spot where we're depending on him on the PK. It's just not an optimal situation for him right now. If we'd had a training camp and pre-season, maybe he would have won a spot. If we were a better team that could better afford to carry him if he didn't work, or a worse team not worried about the consequences, he might have a spot. In short, the main reason he's being sent down is because he can be.

By that logic, Steve Tuttle should have gone to jail for attempted murder.