Quote:
Originally Posted by Erick Estrada
I wonder if Treliving could go back in time if he makes the trade as I feel the team may have overestimated Valimaki's ceiling at that time. I think Valimaki is still going to be a solid top 4 defenseman but I think the organization felt he was going to be the heir apparent to Gio.
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He still can. I’m not knocking out Valimaki until I see a much larger sample size. He still has what it takes. I think with his season ending injury at the beginning of 19/20, the covid pause (and not playing him in the playoffs for expansion purposes), and the weird 2021 season isn’t exactly a recipe for success, especially one that doesn’t even have 100 GP let alone a full 82 game season under his belt. Defenseman also take longer too develop.
Stone wasn’t going to be the deciding factor between the Avs and us in ‘19. We were shelled from every single one of their lines. Stone couldn’t be on the ice for 60 minutes. It was good we didn’t trade a top end prospect for a guy we had no cap space to re-sign. We had to re-sign Tkachuk too.