Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
You can't ignore the expansion draft though.
the Flames are well known to be one of a handful of teams without protection problems. That was always going to be Treliving's play, I said it in my trade deadline prediction article; make a move to grab a forward from a team that could/would have protection issues.
making a play for Lazar doesn't mean nobody else would have liked to have him ... but the Flames were a very unique team in that they
a) are young and still adding to the core
b) don't need to add rentals since they're not in all in mode
c) aren't sellers looking to add picks and not move them
d) have execs and coaches with Lazar knowledge
e) have the protection list room to take the project on
if you run down that list you won't find many if any other teams
|
Sure, not every team was in the position to acquire the player even if they had valued him to the same capacity as the Flames, however, it is not as though they did not have the opportunity to acquire the player by making organization/roster changes if Lazar for a 2nd was a perceived bargain. Just because the flames have the room to acquire Lazar doesn't mean they didn't have to make their own internal shuffles regarding expansion. Now it likely means exposing brouwer which was not a given say 2 weeks ago.
Further, there were teams in a position to acquire Lazar but chose not to, and that includes a team like the Canucks who made a separate deal with the sens during the window Lazar was available. Now, just because the Canucks don't grab a player doesn't mean he's no good, but it illustrates that the senators had options on the trade market. It may be in accurate to say 29 teams passed on Lazar and that isn't really the point I am trying to make. The point is that it was public information long enough that the senators were shopping him that if he was a very attractive asset teams could have positioned themselves to acquire him as the Flames did. If the team's in the running, say it is as few as 10 teams able to take on Lazar, ultimately the flames appear to have given the strongest offer for his services because they ended up with the player. In a year or two the flames will either look like they saw something others didn't or they saw something that wasn't there, or that they analysed his value perfectly to exchange the second rounder.
However it ends up the judgement of the trade will happen in the context of what did the rest of the league decide to do, in the same way we judge the draft.