Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
It was both, actually. Stone was blocking Andersson, and Kulak was blocking Valimaki. Hamonic breaking his face in the season opener is what opened up space for Andersson. But Kulak would have remained in Valimaki's way.
Assuming that Valimaki were to outplay Kulak in training camp, what do you do then? You don't really want to bury $900k in the minors, and you don't really want Kulak to be the 7D - especially if the organization wanted Prout there to provide 'toughness' when needed. So the most likely result in this scenario is the Flames trade Kulak anyway.
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Assuming Valimaki out plays Kulak in preseason I would probably have wanted to start Valimaki in the AHL because of his age at the time and the waiver flexibility. Thems the breaks on an ELC.
I think the desperation to move Stone should've set in by then so I would've tried to do whatever I could to rid the team of that contract and carried Kulak as the 7th D if Valimaki had/was outplaying him.
That's sort of the point I'm making is that I would've rather spent an asset to move stone than get nothing in return for Kulak. If those are the two options to make the roster work, that's the direction i go in.
Valimaki was the best of the youngsters in camp but at 20 years he was arguably the easiest to justify starting in the AHL. I probably wouldn't have liked it if that's how it went down but I would've understood why.