Quote:
Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina
Fun fact: every player the Flames dealt today could be a unrestricted free agent in the next 2 years. Including Dougie. If he wasnt happy here, as it seems, would he have re-signed?
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Even if you wanted to look at it from this perspective, first, wouldn't you want to get players actually under contract rather than two RFA's? What do you think they're going to sign for, term and dollars? I have very little idea - I would ordinarily say that both of them turning down contract offers from the Canes a few days ago is a serious warning sign, but I don't know what to make of the current Canes management strategy.
More importantly though, if this is the motivation for making the trade, it shouldn't affect their trade value, with the result that you shouldn't be losing the trade from a pure hockey perspective. Do other GMs know you're going to have trouble signing Fox? Is there some common knowledge that Hamilton is going to be asking for some exorbitant contract after 2021? There's no indication of that. So why would you not be able to get fair value for these guys? Surely you could have found that value somewhere, in some form.
I mean, this doesn't even really address the team's key weakness - trading a 30-40 pt RW for a 40-50 pt C/RW, while downgrading your defense's transition game. To me, Lindholm seems like a potentially good fit with Backlund and Tkachuk, but you still don't have a first line RW. Maybe that deal is still in the works... Lots of summer left, I suppose. I'm just concerned that this is supposed to be that fix, and I don't think it is.