Based on Pierre LeBrun's tweet (
https://twitter.com/PierreVLeBrun/st...40951512739841) from last night, it appears the Flames are looking at Mats Zuccarello. I posted my support of the Flames trading for Zuccarello a while back and I am still in favour of the move.
My reasons are:
(1) he will probably cost significantly less in terms of assets out than one of the big names: Stone, Panarin, Duchene, etc.
(2) he has been a productive player throughout his career (0.69 points/game = 56.58 points/82 games) and he is not slowing down this year with 37 points in 46 games
(3) he has only ever been positive in CF% relative to his teammates (this year he is +3.7%), which indicates to me that he helps his team possess the puck
(4) he will not complicate the salary structure next year as he is an UFA
(5) given that he will be 32 at the start of next year, the Flames may be able to bring him back relatively cheap if they really like him given that the market for older players has decreased significantly
(6) he has a reputation for playing hard and being feisty so he might be another body on the PK
(7) there are stories about him having really good relationships with his teammates (
https://nypost.com/2019/02/21/henrik...th-zuccarello/), so I doubt he would disrupt the team's chemistry
(8) He has posted very strong results this season while playing on a bad team and against much better competition than the teammates he is playing with (
https://public.tableau.com/shared/WM...play_count=yes)
(9) The lines could look like this (I apologize in advance):
Gaudreau - Monahan - Neal
Tkachuk - Lindholm - Zuccarello
Bennett - Backlund - Frolik
Mangiapane/Czarnik/Hathaway - Jankowski - Ryan
Personally, I love those lines.