Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick Bateman
If Smid is soooo much more than that, how come not one team was willing to give up a legit NHL player, or a strong prospect to acquire him? Were the Flames the only team in the world that have scouted Smid correctly? Are the Flames the only team in the NHL that needed another NHL calibre defensemen?
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Cap space.
Oilers needed to shed cap to sign Bryzgalov as quickly as possible. And as a bit of a preemptive strike there's a lot of posts describing just how little cap space the Oilers had at the time of the trade if you disagree with the previous sentence.
But now take a look at just how little cap space there actually is. Today there are 12 teams over the cap and having to utilize the LTIR to stay compliant. Some teams have already resigned themselves to the fact that they will be having cap penalties next year because of their bonus structures. There were very few teams that had the cap space to take on the 3M that was owed to Smid and remain compliant at the time. The couple that could included teams with internal budgets like Ottawa, Florida, Colorado and the Islanders. So now you're down to maybe 3 or 4 teams to deal with even before taking in consideration their needs. So even if you could convince Nashville to spend to the cap they aren't looking at another defenseman when they have Weber, Jones, Josi and Klein and need some help upfront.
They almost were forced to deal with Calgary and in doing so Calgary was able to lowball them on Smid. If this was an off-season trade when there was cap available they probably could have made out better. Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, they wanted Bryzgalov that day.