[edslunch]

Originally Posted by Nelson

Milan Lucic has been just fine for the Flames so far this year. I think the Flames get 56 percent of the shots when he’s on the ice. That’s pretty great, and I think that him having at least a positive impact on possession was predictable based on his underlying numbers from past seasons. Quite a few ppl pointed that out.

But James Neal is having a heck of a season. He has 27 shots so far. He’s on pace for 276 shots (last year, he had 141). If he regresses to his career mean shooting percentage, he’d get 32 goals on the season.

I think Holland has hit this one out of the park. If Neal gets even 21-25 goals, that’s awesome. Even if he does decline in future years, there’s the buyout. Meanwhile, we have a guy that has a positive impact on possession and intimidates for 5.25 million dollars for the next four seasons who cannot be bought out (I’m not gonna mention the expansion draft b/c I’m assuming Treliving has that worked out based on an interview he gave after the trade). Sure, we’ll likely get a 3rd round pick as well, but to me the sum total of $500 K cap space, a 3rd round pick, and a helps-with-possession-and-intimidates player who likely cannot be moved is enough to justify trading a potential 30 goal scorer (at least for this year) to our division rival.

Is or isn’t enough to justify?