Quote:
Originally Posted by ST20
In my opinion the variance is what people are annoyed with. When you trade that 5D (who would be a 4 on many teams) makes a big difference. There seems to be many contenders looking to add size in the back end due to underperformance of the team or injuries. The reason why the trade had to happen now was not convincing and if they were patient they could have gotten more. I don't see a pressing need for why it needed to happen now.
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Last year, a total of 22 players making more than $3.5M were traded between December 1st and the trade deadline. That includes players that were included as cap dumps to non-contenders (5) and players that were traded twice but does not include LTIR players. So, contenders collectively acquired around 16 players worth $3.5M or more. Almost all of those included salary retention (13).
The Flames, with Zadorov, were trying to move 4, with 3 slots for salary retention. Why did it have to happen now? Hard to say, but the Flames are headed toward the trade deadline trying to be responsible for 20-30% of last years’ total movement between Dec 1 and the trade deadline by themselves. And they’re not the only team looking to move guys.
Zadorov was the smallest fish in the pool of trade bait. You can ask “why did it happen now” but there’s no indication it would have been easier or any better moving him later.
For what it’s worth, there were only 3 players out of the 22 making more than $3.5M that returned a 2nd round pick or more without salary retention and without a significant cap-dump coming back. 2 of them were defencemen, and both of them play on the top pairing for their team.