Quote:
Originally Posted by blankall
Was it clear Stone was not going to sign?
The only thing I saw was that Stone gave no indication of his intentions to sign post trade, and it was a bit of a surprise that he did sign right away in Vegas.
Either way, it's obviously a hindsight argument, to state Calgary should have thrown a bunch of large assets at Stone. However, I do think it makes a difference as to how the Flames are perceived in future negotiations with upcoming UFAs.
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for some of us on this board it's not a hindsight argument.
The biggest hindsight argument/fabrication is that the flames wouldn't have been able to sign him or that the had expressed interest in signing only with Vegas.
If that was the case then the flames wouldn't have been in on him so hard.
The difference was Vegas kept the salary open to add at the deadline and the flames wasted it on neal. Vegas could do a deal without sending salary to the cheapest franchise in the league and the flames had to move salary to complete the transaction.
The price to move salary was a heck of a lot more expensive than the deal that didn't involve salary, so he ended up in Vegas.
There is not some big mystery when it comes to signing elite players.
If the flames were in on stone until the 11th hour it's because they expected to keep him.
I would have moved Andersson and valimaki plus the 2 firsts to grab stone and get out from under Neal. Considering what the flames ended up having to do to move Neal, I consider that a bargain.