[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by Cali Panthers Fan

As much as all 3 of those players would help us long term, it's doubtful that all 3 will become NHL players.

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So while it might hurt a little to give up a higher prospect, we aren't giving up blue-chippers here. These kind of deals happen all the time and it's not often that the prospect going the other way vastly outperforms the guy he's being traded for.

That is why you don't trade any of them. A rebuilding team does not put its eggs in one basket and trade prospects for veterans. Or have you forgotten how we traded Laurent Brossoit for Ladislav Smid? Know who would look really nice in net right now? Laurent Brossoit. But they put their eggs into the Ortio basket.

If the one defensemen among those three that will become an NHL player is the one you trade away as gauze, you've made a huge mistake. Good teams aren't built by trying to "stop the bleeding". We have to be patient. We'll find a goaltender at a cost that makes sense.

It's not about blue chippers vs "good prospects". It's about the stage in the rebuild we are in. If Hickey shows he's the #4D of the future, then you're in a position to trade a Kylington.

The Lightning are a team that are in the stage of their rebuild where they can move an Anthony DeAngelo to fill a roster hole. We're not at that stage. Goaltending may be the toughest roster hole to swallow, but it's not the toughest to fill.

I imagine if we sign guys like Reimer et al we will be having this same pining for a quality goaltender a year from now.

Are we a cup contender a year from now with Ben Bishop in net?
IMO, no.
And if we are icing a contending roster, that's when you can trade away extra picks or prospects for a veteran goalie.

We don't have many assets that have value

And that's the center of my argument. This team is in an asset-building phase. We have to suck it up but hope that this team continues to grow so that the asset-building phase becomes a finishing-touches phase. The biggest mistake you can make is thinking because you have some star players you can wing it everywhere else until everything magically falls into place.

We can't just not have a good goalie until a prospect develops into one.

I'm not saying go into next season with terrible goaltending, but I am saying that mediocre goaltending in front of a good team will get still you a lot further than good goaltending in front of a mediocre team, as tough as it can be to swallow. The class of netminding we got last season for example, was good enough to beat the Ducks if we had a better team than the Ducks. The goal should still, first and foremost be to construct a great group of 21 skaters. Once you're really, really happy with your 21 skaters (and this is where over a full season you see if they are dominating consistently), then you can see what you have. And who knows, by then Gillies might be ready. If he's not, you can trade futures. Even a future first round pick, like 25th overall, for a goalie you really like (a la Martin Jones to SJS) is a fine tradeoff at that point. Or you can get a Dubnyk for a third. And then maybe that will be a Kylington type prospect but it won't sting half as hard if you have a roster that isn't dependant on prospects taking the next step soon.

That's something that should be considered as to why Treliving hasn't made a move for a goalie this season. Could he have? I'm sure. But he still has a long term vision.

Even if it's not a prospect that's the future goaltender of this team, I don't believe this team is desperate for anything better than a league average goaltender on a sensible contract.

I wonder if we had kept the draft picks this year whether people would have been happy with the players selected, or would they have rathered we just had another young stud defenseman playing 20 minutes a night.

The key in that is that unlike Bishop, Hamilton was 22 years old. If Hamilton was on the other side of 25 it would have been an awful trade.