Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
It's times like these that I just love the fact we do prospect rankings. So easy to discredit two players traded to the Oilers, but when you can look back to July and August and see they were ranked 11th and 17th on the prospect list it isn't a stretch to say the Flames dealt two second tier prospects for a top four dman.
I've been away all weekend so I'm sure this has been said ... but I can't for the life of me understand this from an Oilers perspective. They must really really like one of the two Calgary players because their D is thin and Smid was one of the only sure thing defenders they had.
Tanking?
But on the same day they go out and add to goaltending?
So strange.
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Honestly, and as pathetic as it is, they needed the cap space to sign Brzygalov. They may have been able to do some housekeeping to get that tight fit but the team was hovering around 60M in 'hard' cap and an additional 9.1M in bonuses. The bonus cushion only applies for a maximum of 7.5%, or 4.8M, so that other roughly 4.3M of bonuses applies the same as regular cap like that other 60M, bringing them to near exactly the ceiling's 64.3M.
They could have waived Labarbera, and sent some other players down and might have been able to very tightly fit in Brzygalov depending on exactly what he was making. But this was a cap transaction, which I would have to assume was what MacTavish thought was the best way to be able to fit in Bryzgalov.
And when it came to trading Smid, or however else they thought about making cap space through trades, there's actually very little cap space out there today. Only a handful of teams could have taken on Smid's ~2.8M left on his contract today and those teams include Buffalo and Florida, who probably aren't looking to turn their seasons around with a Smid calibre player, and other teams with internal budgets like the Islanders, Senators and Coyotes. It might have only taken the Avalanche to say "thanks but no thanks" because they don't want to ruin their chemistry before Calgary was the only possible destination.
Feaster has talked a lot about using cap space to the team's advantage, the only way to look at this trade is him finally coming through with his promise.