Quote:
Originally Posted by Flash Walken
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.
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Well I'm definitely not saying the Flames were the only team in a position where they could acquire Lazar, but I would guess the number is a lot closer to 1 then it is 29
But for sure, I think it likely that at least one other team could have made this move and didn't because they didn't like the asking price or didn't feel the expansion draft list change was worth the risk