Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulie Walnuts
Trading for Pettersson takes out of rebuilding and immediately puts us into a retool mode and quickly. We don’t have much to retool around so keeping those picks would be crucial because we will need to start spending them to get established NHL players to play with him.
You probably need to start pushing for the playoffs next season as well otherwise you are just wasting him during his prime years. So we will have to dip into free agency to fill out the roster with some 30 plus.
So all the cap space you brought up that’s quickly gone. We haven’t signed Zary, Coronato or Wolf and will have to nickel and dime them.
We start that vicious cycle again.
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I don’t see any reason why Conroy would be forced to sign free agents immediately because he traded for a 26 yr old center. I suspect he would be more than able to restrain himself from that and sign his young RFA’s long term and hope that he has 2 top 9 wingers amongst Suniev, Gridin, Honzek, Basha, Battaglia and whoever he drafts this year to go with the 4 long term top 9 wingers he already has (Coronato, Zary, Sharangovich, Huberdeau).
It would be beyond bizarre if he all of the sudden thought “geez, I have to sign all the young players to bridge contracts and go and spend 25 million on UFA’s instead”.
Suspect all a trade for Pettersson would mean is that the Flames continue their rebuild and Conroy continues his plan to build through draft capital, try to find players that want to be here long term and trade players before the organization loses the asset for nothing.i I doubt the team would base their plan around “not wasting one player in their prime years”. They certainly did not do that when they had Lindholm, Andersson, Hanifin, and Markstrom arguably in their prime years last year. Doubt they would deviate just for one player.