Quote:
Originally Posted by The Yen Man
You would think Eichel's trade value is dropping by the day. Had it have been done earlier in the summer, Eichel would have had the surgery and already in his recovery window. Now, he gets traded mid Sep, and the team who gets him will have to most likely burn the whole 2021-2022 season without him.
I guess in the long run, this means Flames give up less to get him if they do get him. So I'm ok with playing chicken with Buffalo. If we get him, great. If not, we move on.
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It’s a very strange trade at this point. Looking at the teams that might be trading for him right now (NY, Anaheim, Calgary), they aren’t teams that can give up quality players to acquire him and still be very competitive while they wait for eichel to get healthy. I would argue that Calgary is probably in the best position of those teams to give up a player like Monahan and still battle for a playoff spot, but it would definitely make it tougher.
So Buffalo is limiting themselves even more in terms of interested teams because I think it needs to be a team that is ready to compete (i.e. not at the beginning of a rebuild) and is also good enough to give up a first-round quality asset from their roster without sinking their team for the year. Plus the team needs to have the cap space to fit in eichel.
Any team trading for him will likely be giving up a 1st round pick in 2022 that could potentially be a valuable pick because the team is missing both eichel and the roster player they give up (Monahan for example). Which means that pick should have some protections on it. I suggested something like this:
If eichel plays more than 50 games this year, it’s top 5 protected.
If eichel plays less than 50 games this year, it’s top 10 protected.
This could be a big hold up in trade talks. Buffalo is probably thinking it would only be fair for them to get a top five pick for eichel since he is a top center in the league and other teams have gotten that from trading players like Duchene and Karlsson. Karlsson came with serious injury issues when he was traded too and the pick that was included in the package for him was not protected.
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