Columbus moving in a new direction

[Sylvanfan]

Well since the other teams around me in the standings are all red hot and never losing, ownership in Columbus has ordered GM Sylvanfan to move the team in a new direction.

It's not an all out firesale as we have aspirations of fielding a competitive team still, but we're open to moving pretty much anyone.

Erik Cole and Scott Niedermayer are two players that we want to keep in particular. So don't ask me what I want for them, but you can always offer. Still chances are I'll keep these two. Another guy who's often asked about is Christian Erhoff. To be honest I really don't know what I'd want for him so it doesn't make sense for me to trade him either.

Brian Rafalski is a guy who I'll take offers on. But again he's a very effective player and my preference would be to keep him. If the offer makes sense though I'll move him.

Depth guys like Cory Cross, Christian Laflamme, Alex Khavanov, Tyler Wright, and Vaclav Varada can all be had for picks. If you have lots of cap space and feel like gambling on Ricci he can be moved for a pick as well.

I want to explore a few options with others like Ritchie, Scatchard and Satan before I decide to make final decsicions on them. By no means is this a everyone must go now at all costs type of situation, but I'll look at anything that is a fair offer. Best to get me by e-mail or PM as I'm going to take a couple days to process everything.

A couple of deals were made yesterday where Adrian Aucoin was shipped out for Matt Greene and Josh Gorges and a nice sum of cash for the Preds. Shortly after the deal Aucoin was locked up for the next two seasons. We did like Aucoin and he was good for us. I never asked the agent about an extension but the price came in right where I thought it would. Still Gorges and Green are both good young defenders even if they don't possess a lot of offensive upside. Still with guys like Niedermayer, Rafalski and Erhoff around we feel defensive guys like these along with a guy like Exelby will complement their abilities nicely.

The other deal saw backup goalie Brent Johnson and 1.5 million again moved to Nashville for Mark Streit, Jason Labarbara, and 4 5th round picks (Det, Bos, SJ, and NJ). Johnny was good for us but we felt this was a pretty decent return for our backup goalie. Streit is a usefull bottom pairing defender, and the NHL Kings screwed up big time by putting Labarbara in the minors and going with Dan "my NHL career has gone the way of Patrick Lalime except even further down the tube" Cloutier. Something has to give and I think Labarbara can find an NHL job somewhere next year. If he doesn't we'll have a few dollars to pursue other goaltending options.

I tried to get the team going, but at the end of the day teams like Dallas, and Colorado had a prospect base to go out and get the additional help they needed to make the playoff push. Others like Phoenix, St.Louis and Chicago just have better players and better goaltending than what I gots. I didn't do enough with what I had to outpace those teams and really there was no way I was going to beat out 3 of them for that final spot unless my guys really overachieved, and they'd stopped doing that.

[Preds GM - CPHL]

good luck to ya...

Preds are still rebuilding, but the pieces acquired yesterday are in our long term plan...we wanted to get out defence shored up and we did that with recent acquisations of Aucoin and Markov.

[Sylvanfan]

Yeah, I forgot to mention that the Preds too have been really hot since he overahauled that team. Comparing my lineup to his.....he had the better team and a lot of assets to go forward with. My only prayer was for his goaltending to go into the tank, so I traded him Johnson!!!

J/K Johnson should help the Preds out if Hannu wears down.

These moves do set us up to have a few dollars for next year to try a few things as well. Really do you want to have a 73 million dollar team that can't make the playoffs in the Howe conference?

[jam26]

There are going to be a lot of UFA options for teams with salary room this off-season.

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by jam26

There are going to be a lot of UFA options for teams with salary room this off-season.

To be honest I would hope that by now teams would realize that depending on the UFA market to rebuild their club is a fool's strategy. Already what was once an extensive list is being slowly whittled down to the usual crop of shmos.

GMs simply don't allow valuable players to walk away for nothing.

[Preds GM - CPHL]

Originally Posted by jam26

There are going to be a lot of UFA options for teams with salary room this off-season.

doesnt look like alot of tending will be out there, my missing ingriedient ...they all keep resigning...but who knows, thomas got shelled again yesterday, its time for hannu to become a starter in the nhl now...

[jam26]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

To be honest I would hope that by now teams would realize that depending on the UFA market to rebuild their club is a fool's strategy. Already what was once an extensive list is being slowly whittled down to the usual crop of shmos.

GMs simply don't allow valuable players to walk away for nothing.

I'm not suggesting that relying on UFA signings should be any team's primary rebuilding strategy, but there appear to be some attractive UFA options this year, and not a whole lot of clubs with excessive cap room.

I believe there will be more options out there for clubs with cash than last season, but I guess time will tell.

[Sylvanfan]

Originally Posted by JiriHrdina

To be honest I would hope that by now teams would realize that depending on the UFA market to rebuild their club is a fool's strategy. Already what was once an extensive list is being slowly whittled down to the usual crop of shmos.

GMs simply don't allow valuable players to walk away for nothing.

Yeah, I agree with that. I don't think there will be a lot in terms of UFA guys out there, but I think there will be a few reasonably decent guys to be had. There are a lot of pending RFA's that teams will need to sign and right now there just isn't a lot of spare cap room floating around the league, especially if you put all the IR guys back on rosters. Teams will always keep star players, but there might be a good bit of capable third line types who may not cost outrageous sums of money like past UFA's did. The real advantage to clearing out cap is that it will open up trade options down the road. Usually teams who can absorb some salary in the offseason have the chance to make deals to improve themselves. God knows I'd love for a couple goalies to hit the UFA market, but lets face it anyone worth having as a number one will be locked up and the scraps likely won't be worth the money.

[JiriHrdina]

^^^That's bang on Syl. A strategy built around UFAs has never worked. But one built around have the ability to trade for a couple of overpriced vets to supplement your young talent can work wonders.