It is great to read Oiler fans on the other board be so bitter about this trade. They were the first to post the Holland face on Vince McMahon strut gif as soon as the deal went down and then posted multiple threads on HF when Neal got off to his ridiculous start.
Since then we have slowly but surely watched this trade favor the Flames. For Calgary they were able to save 500k on Neal’s cap hit by acquiring Lucic and while he is not worth his salary Lucic has provided value to the team in his role. He is a respected veteran leader, he still hits guys with regularity, and has started to produce a decent amount of offense.
Oiler fans will point to expansion which I am sure won’t be an option. They then default to the buyout which for them almost makes no sense. If they buy Neal out they have a 2.65M cap penalty when we combine the buyout+retention for 2 more years then have a 1.9M penalty for 2 more years. They would have been better off to trade Lucic somewhere are retain 50% of the cap hit rather than buy Neal out with 2 years left.
The fact we got the salty 3rd (thanks to prorating stats) makes it all sweeter for Flames fans
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