Quote:
Originally Posted by kehatch
I would prefer Ballard over spending assets on a trade or overpaying someone July 5.
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Overpaying someone on July 5th or grabbing an overpaid Ballard, I don't know if I see a huge difference. Other than at least the UFA wants to be in Calgary.
Had it been any other team waiving Ballard, I wouldn't be completely adamant against claiming him. But the Canucks need to get rid of him, they can't afford going into the season with him if they want some chance. Not with the current 4M space they have thanks to the Schneider trade and the need to sign, or promote, 7 players. That's just minimum salary for guys that need to replace players like Schneider, Roy, Tanev and Raymond. A healthy Kesler takes over most of Roy's duty and obviously Luongo is going to be the undisputed number 1 but still a ton of depth lost for the Canucks.
Ballard being claimed would be a huge favour for the Canucks. As there's only a couple of teams that I see considering Ballard and with a good enough UFA class and teams struggling to make cap room I think it could benefit those teams to have the cap space and budget going into July 5th. I think it would suck if the Flames were the only team to put a claim in and do the Canucks that favour. A long rebuild I can live with but helping the Canucks is sacrilegious.
So if Ballard is for sure not in the future plans of Vancouver, what's with the charade of not putting him on unconditional waivers? Unless I'm missing something seems like a terrible bluff or, more likely, the Canucks are not prepared to eat his salary with a buyout if he does pass.