2014/2015 Trade Speculation and Rumors

[Glo Boyz]

Can somebody find me that chart where it shows a players analytical performance measured on a graph. With the x-axis being labeled with: "first pairing" / "second pairing" / "third pairing"

I remember seeing Kris Russell's on HF and all of his stats (besides toi) lined up with a prototypical third pairing d.

[Glo Boyz]

These two players are just unsatisfactory at suppressing shots against. It's not because they're individually bad players - both are decent #4-5s but as a duo you've got Wideman who's slow and has mediocre positioning, and Russell whose positioning and speed are good but whose size limits his effectiveness (but you can see from his fenwick against that his shotblocking makes him an NHL-calibur defender). As a pairing they lose one-on-one battles to pucks and end up spending way more time than they need to hemmed into the opponent's zone. They're good enough to not be a liability, but not good enough to be the strength people assume they are.

They had a strong year, and somehow the Flames kept on chugging even when they got upgraded to top pairing competition, but don't let that confuse you into thinking they're a top-shelf middle pairing. They should be upgraded if the Flames have championship aspirations. Giving Russell a partner who is better at shot suppression has shown good results, like when he's been paired with Brodie. But finding a good RHD to pair with him isn't easy or cheap.

[Mattman]

Weird thought and I'm not saying its a solid one but if the Flames offered:

Dougie Hamilton- Boston RFA about 3.5-5 million/X amount of years

Tyler Toffoli- Los Angeles RFA about 2-3.3 million/X amount of years


That means the Flames would get a 23 year old RW and a 21 year old right handed defense man. And doing this would potentially shuffle the roster and guys would be moved out to upgrade other players or re-aquire those picks. Would you guys give up the compensation of our:

2016 1st (Hamilton)
2016 2nd (Toffoli)
2016 3rd (Hamilton)


EDIT: Might be smart to mention that the Bruins currently have $4,881,190 in cap to resign 5 UFAs and 2 RFAs
and the Kings have $9,052,273 to resign 5 UFAs and 4 RFAs. So this might make their GMs think before matching those instantly. Just an idea.

(I vaguely remember someone saying compensation picks for the players would be NEXT year as the 2015 draft would have already happened)

[Vinny01]

Those offer sheets would be instantly matched

[sureLoss]

Originally Posted by Mattman

Weird thought and I'm not saying its a solid one but if the Flames offered:

Dougie Hamilton- Boston RFA about 3.5-5 million/X amount of years

Tyler Toffoli- Los Angeles RFA about 2-3.3 million/X amount of years


That means the Flames would get a 23 year old RW and a 21 year old right handed defense man. And doing this would potentially shuffle the roster and guys would be moved out to upgrade other players or re-aquire those picks. Would you guys give up the compensation of our:

2016 1st (Hamilton)
2016 2nd (Toffoli)
2016 3rd (Hamilton)

(I vaguely remember someone saying compensation picks for the players would be NEXT year as the 2015 draft would have already happened)

They will match instantly and thank you for signing their guys to very reasonable contracts.

If you want an offer sheet to have a chance of not being matched you need to make the cap hit for those guys so heinous, that they have to consider dismantling their core (i.e. trade them away) to keep those players on their team.

The cap hits you posted are pretty fair value (some would say bargains) for those two players and easily manageable by their respective team.

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by Glo Boyz

Can somebody find me that chart where it shows a players analytical performance measured on a graph. With the x-axis being labeled with: "first pairing" / "second pairing" / "third pairing"

I remember seeing Kris Russell's on HF and all of his stats (besides toi) lined up with a prototypical third pairing d.

I'd be careful of those x-axis labels. While those charts are good to kind of give you an idea of which players go well together, they still operate in relatives, not absolutes. One thing going against Russell is how little PP he played, along with who his pairing mate was. The same sort of chart could be made of Brent Seabrook for instance:



But it just won't tell the whole story because there's no context. You can see the night-and-day difference in Russell's production when he was on the top PP unit VS when he was replaced by Diaz on the second PP unit just by his point production. But those charts don't show that part. Defensively the Russell-Wideman pairing might have had issues but that doesn't mean one or the other isn't a middle pairing Dman. It just means together they're not one of the top middle pairings in the league, but still better than a lot out there.

[FlameZilla]

Regarding the offer sheet situation, are we at the stage now where we can afford to give up a few future draft choices?

I'd say the 'cupboards' are full-to-bursting and we're about to add 6 top draft choices to that cupboard. I don't think it would cripple us if we were to give up 1st, 2nd & 3rd round picks in order to sign Doug Hamilton to a $5 million+ contract. Just my opinion, though. I know giving up draft choices willy-nilly is a slippery slope, as evidenced by Darryl Sutter's dubious tenure as GM.

[Cheese]

You will not get Dougie Hamilton for 5 Million bucks. You wont get him for 6 or 7 Million bucks either.
Think north of 7 and then the draft picks we have to give up become very onerous and quite frankly Hamilton would not go anywhere anyways as Boston would match pretty much any offer.

same goes for Toffoli in LA...not worth giving up our own future for him

Develop our own vs stealing others.

[RoughRiderRowdy]

Originally Posted by Cheese

You will not get Dougie Hamilton for 5 Million bucks. You wont get him for 6 or 7 Million bucks either.
Think north of 7 and then the draft picks we have to give up become very onerous and quite frankly Hamilton would not go anywhere anyways as Boston would match pretty much any offer.

same goes for Toffoli in LA...not worth giving up our own future for him

Develop our own vs stealing others.

No way in hell is he getting north of 7 mill. Give your head a shake

[doctajones428]

Originally Posted by RoughRiderRowdy

No way in hell is he getting north of 7 mill. Give your head a shake

I think he's saying the only way Boston gives up Hamilton is if someone offers him 7+ million

[Samuelsson]

*obviously theoretical disclaimer* could we afford that though? What with the amount of raises our guys are gonna warrant in the next couple of seasons - especially Gio and Brodie already on D - then it wouldn't look too likely.

[Badgers Nose]

Best case scenario Spoon Morrison and Emile make the team. Failing that, Flames will have to deal to improve the team.

[bubbsy]

on the sportsnet 590 station here in toronto, they were claiming that they are hearing murmurs of the leafs trying to not only draft at 4, but get the #5 pick from carolina in exchange they'd be willing to part with the 24th pick, and a roster player. The catch being that the leafs take back the full Semin contract.

[Vinny01]

Going to have to be a decent roster player like Gardiner or Kadri I imagine.

Hiller, Raymond, 15, 53
For
Ward, Semin, 5
??

[Poe969]

Originally Posted by Cheese

You will not get Dougie Hamilton for 5 Million bucks. You wont get him for 6 or 7 Million bucks either.
Think north of 7 and then the draft picks we have to give up become very onerous and quite frankly Hamilton would not go anywhere anyways as Boston would match pretty much any offer.

same goes for Toffoli in LA...not worth giving up our own future for him

Develop our own vs stealing others.

I think we'd get Hamilton for 7.3 or whatever it is before it moves up to the max offer. He's worth it though. He's going to be a top pairing D in the league for several years and possibly even better. He's the kind of guy that you hope to draft and exactly what this team needs. The only way you get a player like that in the draft is by winning the lottery or having a top 5 pick, I don't think we'll be in that position for a while. Developing our own prospects is easy to say but pedigree has a lot more to do with it. The panthers got Ekblad and he's going to be a stud, not because the panthers have an excellent development program but because he's an amazing young player. Hamilton is an amazing young player, we don't have anyone close to his talent level in the organization and I'm willing to bet we don't draft a young defenseman of his talent level in a long, long time (especially not in the next 3 years where we'd have to give up our first round picks). Hamilton would step in and be on our top pairing or make our second pairing great and our third pairing a lot better than it was. Gio-Brodie, Wideman-Hamilton, Russell-England or some variation of that would set the Flames up for a long time.

[dissentowner]

Originally Posted by Poe969

I think we'd get Hamilton for 7.3 or whatever it is before it moves up to the max offer. He's worth it though. He's going to be a top pairing D in the league for several years and possibly even better. He's the kind of guy that you hope to draft and exactly what this team needs. The only way you get a player like that in the draft is by winning the lottery or having a top 5 pick, I don't think we'll be in that position for a while.

Dougie Hamilton, drafted 9th overall.

[Erick Estrada]

I really like Russell but IMO he would be better in the 3rd pairing and moving up to top 4 if injuries dictate. The Ducks in the playoffs manhandled him as it seemed like he was on the ice for almost all their goals as he's unable to handle the big forwards.

[Poe969]

Originally Posted by dissentowner

Dougie Hamilton, drafted 9th overall.

Ya, I know I should have said top 10 pick but was too lazy to fix it. Point being, good young defensemen like him don't come along often at all. The Flames don't look like they'll be drafting top 10 in a while but who knows. I'm willing to bet that getting a guy like Hamilton will make sure we don't draft in the top 10 for a while. I don't know if there is another player with size and skill like that coming for a while either.

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by Poe969

Ya, I know I should have said top 10 pick but was too lazy to fix it. Point being, good young defensemen like him don't come along often at all. The Flames don't look like they'll be drafting top 10 in a while but who knows. I'm willing to bet that getting a guy like Hamilton will make sure we don't draft in the top 10 for a while. I don't know if there is another player with size and skill like that coming for a while either.

If we're really talking about Dougie Hamilton as an offer-sheet, then what we're really talking about is trading 4 First Round draft picks + 7M per season on the cap as RFA compensations is based on total dollars of contract averaged over 5 years - not averaged over the term of the deal.

7 year, 49M contract = 7M cap-hit, but for RFA compensation purposes the number is 9.8M per year, which costs us 4 first round picks.

It's just too high of a cost to ever even consider.

[Poe969]

I wouldn't go to the top offer though. I'd offer 5 years at 7.3 or whatever it is to not be that top level of compensation. I think he's worth that but I wouldn't go higher, if the B's decide to match it's ok and we at least tried. I don't think they'd be able to match that though and if they did, they'd have to seriously gut their team.

I think Hamilton is worth signing to a 7.3 or whatever offer sheet but not higher. If they match, we know that at least they tried.