Quote:
Originally Posted by Corral
Hard to see any positives on this deal for the Flames. Head scratcher. If you want to just get rid of James Neal, than do it and bring in some young brute to patrol the wings on a minimum salary. I don't buy the argument that there wasn't a deal out there for Neal whereby the Flames pretty much just give away a perennial 20 goal scorer for a pick or two.
Concerning that his worst NHL year was here. Its easy to blame it all on him, but that is unlikely to be the whole story.
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It’s pretty simple.
Paying Neal to play for 4 years would have cost 23 million
Paying Lucic to play will cost 13 million real dollars
That right there saves the owners 10 million real dollars.
Yeah, the cap hit is 5.25 and that’s not ideal, but in terms of real dollars? Not so bad.
Buying out James Neal would cost 15.3 million dollars real cash and an 8 year cap hit of 1.93 M.
(It is cheaper to pay Lucic for 4 years than it is to pay Neal to go away!)
If you did that, the difference between Lucic’s 5.25 cap hit and Neal’s 1.9 sunk cap hit is about 3.3 million
So the question could be asked like this.
Suppose the Flames bought out James Neal.
If you could pick up a player for 3.3 M, who would you get?
If you could get Lucic for 4 years at a 3.3 M cap hit, would you consider it?
(Never mind the fact that if you bought out Neal, you are still on the hook for 1.9 for 4 years after this 4 year term)
If I am the owners, I sure as heck am not putting Treliving on the hot seat.
James Neal declared by his action that he didn’t give a crap, and ran himself out of town. Good riddance.
The more I think about this deal, it is pretty shrewd by BT.