Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814
Look, I’m not saying it’s not a pickle.
But they have four core forwards, two core defensemen, and a goalie locked up for the foreseeable future. Philosophically, I don’t think you want your core to be larger than four forwards and two D anyway.
In a do or die, tie it up or go home scenario, you can only have 6 guys on the ice anyway. And nobody but Brent Sutter would try 3F 3D with the goalie out.
So it makes more sense to spend your resources on the 4th forward. They play closer to the net and might actually score the goal to keep you alive - Eichel, Stone, Karlsson, Patches, Pietrangelo, and Theodore is a frightening task to defend in the last minute of a game.
Karlsson is the shortest, at 6 ft 1, and they’re all over 200lbs. That’s a lot of beef to look past if you’re an opposing goalie. All six are extremely high-skill players, they skate well, they can all score from distance.
All four forwards are 30-goal players.
Vegas will trade what they have to to make themselves compliant, and in doing so recoup some of the prospect capital they’ve lost in these deals. They knew that going in.
We would have had a variant of the same problem had Try Hard closed the deal, and it would have been a good problem to have.
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This just ignores the point of what we're talking about, which is that depth is going to be a huge issue for Vegas. It's great they have 6 killer players (most 30+), but there's a minimum of 18 spots they need to fill. It's great they have a whole line and one pairing that will be an absolute nightmare, but even if they play the #### out of that line every night, that's still half the game or more where someone else is going to play hockey for Vegas... and they don't have a whole lot of someone else right now and are going to struggle to fill those spots with anything good.
To the bolded specifically... well, they might recoup some prospect capital... maybe. Tampa Bay had to send a 2nd with Johnson to acquire a LTIR player that would help them fit in cap-wise. So it's just as likely they lose even more prospect capital becoming compliant. Who is helping them out?
Just to be clear, it's not that Eichel isn't a big get for them. He is. It's not that we should be so lucky we missed out, we shouldn't. And it's not that the Flames wouldn't have had some variation of that issue to work out, they would have (though much, much better suited to deal with it than Vegas, based on our overall contract situation).
The point is that the Vegas people see right now, the Vegas that went to the conference finals two years ago, is not the Vegas that is going into next year. This was a team that was tough to play against through the lineup. It's going to be a top-heavy team with bad depth. It isn't just Eichel that caused it, but he's certainly the contract that removes any illusion of that transition being complete. They've entered Toronto and Edmonton territory (and post cup-win Chicago, for that matter), and we'll see how it goes for them. Lehner alone may ensure their fortunes are different. Amazingly, they entered that territory faster than Tampa Bay, but Tampa Bay got two cups out of their journey there (LTIR was a gift, of course). Vegas has this year to be as stacked a team as they are if everyone comes back at the start of the playoffs. Otherwise they just won't be.
Do I wish the Flames had this problem to figure out? Sure. But we can realistically say the Flames would have had an easier time figuring it out, and that Vegas of 2022-23 may not be better than the Vegas team that went to the conference finals, and might not be for the duration of Eichel's contract.