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Originally Posted by Jay Random
That's precisely the point. Vancouver needed to shed cap to make the deal work. So they dumped Kuzmenko instead of having the Flames retain on Lindholm.
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Which should have required the Canucks to pay appropriately to do so, which they didn’t. The Flames (if they were a well run hockey team) would have no problems retaining half of Lindholm to make it work, not taking on a cap dump for essentially free instead.
Where is the value Calgary got for helping Vancouver out of the Kuzmenko contract? It’s just not there. 1st+Bruzustewicz+depth pick/prospect was the absolute bare minimum for what Lindholm should have returned on his own.
So now we get the honor of having to deal with Kuzmenko and didn’t get paid a penny to deal with it. Better players have been dumped for more than it took to add Kuzmenko to this trade.
But Calgary is not a well run team, they need to “keep a competitive team on the ice”. And so management sees Kuzmenko as being a drop in replacement for Lindholm more or less, just like they (to some success, so far) saw Sharangovich as a drop in replacement for Toffoli. The mandate is not to get any worse on the ice while moving these players that don’t want to be here long term. The futures returns in these trades are secondary to management’s apparent need to have a fresh body take the place of the old one.
It’s not the worst strategy overall but it is one that keeps the team away from the ultimate goal. This team still needs two franchise players, every good team has 2. You get them at the draft, and you most often get them in the top 5. This team is never going to aim to pick top 5, as evidenced by these trades that are placing value on the return’s ability to contribute on the ice vs it’s ability to contribute in the future.
To use an analogy, the Flames are investing everything in a GIC. “It’s steady, safe, free money” they say, as they lose year over year to inflation. The team needs to gamble a little bit if they ever want to become a premier team.