I am still on the side of 'rebuild', and I have also often criticized Treliving for spending low picks on depth pieces.
However, I don't think acquiring Samuelsson goes against the grain of either point above. Samuelsson is still young with a decent amount of term left, and this is a way of weaponizing cap space, as the assumption would be that Calgary would be paying a negligible amount here relative to his value simply to absorb his higher cap hit.
It isn't a player that will dramatically affect Calgary's fortunes. He will probably take a bit of work with Huska and the rest of the coaching staff to really get back on the rails, but he could be just an effective as a defencemen as Bahl. Stabilizing defensive pairings goes a long way to winning. I have faith that Calgary with Huska in charge (as it was with Sutter in charge) is a great situation for young defencemen to figure things out. It wouldn't surprise me to see Samuelsson suddenly improve and increase his value as soon as next season. You can always flip defencemen much more easily than you can wingers it seems.
With that being said, I am also happy with Solovyov being given a look here, and see if he can't find some traction. I also love how hard Solovyov can play the game - he can be very abrasive to play against and players need to look out for him when he is on the ice - he had that huge hit in preseason, for instance.
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