Ongoing thread for Neal/Lucic discussion

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by dustygoon

What are you talking about? We added a NMC to our roster that requires protection which is something we didn't have before. Pretty simple. It is one extra player to protect that we didn't have to. Ya....no #### we have two years to maneuver around. You want to hide your head in the sand for two years.....have at it.

There's a pretty good chance Lucic wants to go the west coast. But that aside, two years is a long time to see how the two Feds you mentioned pan out. I'd be more concerned about losing a D frankly, given Francis' preferences and their current play. Namely Kylington.

And even if you get to expose Lucic, one of those forwards is still at risk.

[troutman]

Why does Lucic have "less chance of bouncing back" than Neal? He is younger than Neal and going to a better team.

[CanadaMatt]

Originally Posted by troutman

Why does Lucic have "less chance of bouncing back" than Neal? He is younger than Neal and going to a better team.

Because it’s been certain people’s narrative all season

[Rando]

Originally Posted by troutman

Why does Lucic have "less chance of bouncing back" than Neal? He is younger than Neal and going to a better team.

Two bad seasons in a row, the second one worse than the first. Neal's just had one so if you'd put money on who bounces back I'd bet Neal.

Though if the bet was "will Neal bounce back" by itself, I'd bet against him. He looked so bloody terrible last year. His show went from absolute cannon to lower end super soaker.

[marsplasticeraser]

Originally Posted by CalgaryFan1988

After sleeping on it, I see this as a loss from both teams.

Why would Edmonton do this? They are essentially paying 6.5 million for the next 4 seasons for James Neal.....

Why would Calgary do this? They get a guy making 500k less that has a less chance of bouncing back, but I guess he brings a physical presence if he's not contributing on the scoresheet? With a NMC..... I guess if they trade him again and retain salary, it's cheaper than a buyout with less of a cap hit.

I don't know who lost more. Weird trade.

Flames lost biggest hitter in Hathaway (200 hits last year) and we’re already soft.

Lucic had 275 hits last year. He may also be useful in playoffs where speed becomes less important.

Neal was useless and seemed ok that he was useless.

Look at it if we had traded James Neal for Ryan reeves and retained $2.5mm of NealI think we’d all be happy at getting out from under Neal’s anchor contract. That’s kind of what we did. Lucic has similar offence and physicality.

Neal may work out in Edmonton, but I don’t think we had a need for a slow, non-physical, perimeter winger.

Flames may be only team where lucic can be an improvement.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by transplant99

Condescension noted, and you are always screaming at others for proper discourse. Hilarious. Of course when you do it...no problem. Hypocrisy is fun.

You are right, I did not calculate that correctly, I should be made fun of and admonished for it. Saturday morning fuzzies for sure, but an unacceptable mistake.

However, either way...thats a WHOLE lot of cap space that could be used to get and or help keep really good players. Better?

This is all minutiae to distract from the actual results from this deal however...and the reality is that this looks like it will be the single most monumental mistake of the Treliving legacy with the Flames.

Realllly hope i am wrong on that as well, but unfortunately using recent data sets and even the eye test, this is very unlikely.

Yeah it’s a lot of cap space.

Not enough to sign star players like 19-point 5.75M James Neal, but we’ll have to manage.

The “reality” is only a reality in your head, which seems like it’s full of that aforementioned fuzziness. Even if everything goes south (and hell, it might) it’s pretty hard to believe this is any way monumental or franchise crippling. Unless you believe Neal was suddenly going to rebound playing on Calgary’s third line again, where he was oh so happy and full of effort all season. And if you believe that, more power to you, but the “reality” is, that it was a long shot.

The only mistake made was signing Neal in the first place, and that’s on Neal. If you can’t come to the rink prepared and can’t bother to show up for your team and put effort in, that’s on you. I’d rather have an overpaid player who cares while putting up 20 than one who doesn’t while putting up 20.

Neal wanted out. Peters didn’t trust Neal. He wasn’t turning back into the “real deal” any time soon.

As far as me being “condescending” or “screaming at others” relax man. You made a silly mistake and I told you to use your brain. It’s Saturday morning and the rain has stopped. Hockey forums ain’t serious business

You’re running around calling everything “spin” and saying nobody should think this is anything less than horrible. Time to breathe..

[GirlySports]

It's raining again

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by Rando

Two bad seasons in a row, the second one worse than the first. Neal's just had one so if you'd put money on who bounces back I'd bet Neal.

Though if the bet was "will Neal bounce back" by itself, I'd bet against him. He looked so bloody terrible last year. His show went from absolute cannon to lower end super soaker.

Yeah but youre not considering the Edmonton is no good factor.

[btimbit]

Even after sleeping on it I'm really not too upset. We traded a crappy player for a slightly cheaper crappy player. Big whoop

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by troutman

Why does Lucic have "less chance of bouncing back" than Neal? He is younger than Neal and going to a better team.

I think this is solely based on Neal having one bad year and Lucic having had two.

On the eye test, though I'd never have admitted it last year, Lucic looked to be more engaged. I think he is actually faster than Neal. And a few of Neal's points were pretty lucky (off his butt). I didn't watch Lucic enough to say the same.

Here's something else to give optimism. Lucic played just under 20% with Kassian and Brodziak. Yet he scored just one point of his 20 with them. In particular he only had the one point with Brodziak centring him. He had better success with RNH (naturally). Any one of Backlund, Ryan, Bennett or Jankowski is better than Brodziak.

In other words, Lucic on a third line with better linemates might be way more productive. All of Backlund, Jankowski and Ryan play games much more similar to RNH than Brodziak.

Treliving is pretty good at identifying trade targets that are "about to pop". Lindholm, Hanifin, even Hamilton when he got him. I also think he tends to identify players that aren't fitting in with the team - Hamilton, Sven, etc.

[Lil Pedro]

Did we ever find out if his NMC was kept by the Flames?

[GioforPM]

Originally Posted by Lil Pedro

Did we ever find out if his NMC was kept by the Flames?

Apparently it was, according to the agent. There's a smaller debate on the effect on expansion. Of course, once a player waives once, it's pretty likely he waives again. It's just a question of the player wanting more control over where he goes. And avoiding demotion, in the case of an NMC. It wouldn't surprise me at all of there's some handshake deal about it.

[CalgaryFan1988]

Originally Posted by Lil Pedro

Did we ever find out if his NMC was kept by the Flames?

It's remains on the Capfriendly website. They aren't always right, but they usually are.

[Bingo]

Originally Posted by Erick Estrada

I was hoping this trade was a bad dream when I woke up this morning.

That's pretty much me.

So having let this digest for 20 hours I'm at this point.

1. I never wanted Lucic on the Flames, yuck
2. I have to keep reminding myself that Neal has left as well, which removes some of the yuck
3. Lucic has the worse contract so you knew Edmonton had to kick something in
4. What Edmonton kicked in doesn't balance this for me so I don't get it
5. I wonder still if the Flames insisted Lucic waive his NMC, but havne't heard so and I'm nervous
6. They do have time to sort that out though including a buy out in two years
7. Lucic is a better fit of two players that don't fit because of physical play and not needing to play top six minutes to contribute
8. Guys like Gaudreau calling Lucic tells me the Flames top to bottom really wanted Neal gone
9. Which certainly pushes me to think it's more than the coach that had a problem with the guy

[GranteedEV]

Originally Posted by GioforPM

I think this is solely based on Neal having one bad year and Lucic having had two.

On the eye test, though I'd never have admitted it last year, Lucic looked to be more engaged. I think he is actually faster than Neal. And a few of Neal's points were pretty lucky (off his butt). I didn't watch Lucic enough to say the same.

Here's something else to give optimism. Lucic played just under 20% with Kassian and Brodziak. Yet he scored just one point of his 20 with them. In particular he only had the one point with Brodziak centring him. He had better success with RNH (naturally). Any one of Backlund, Ryan, Bennett or Jankowski is better than Brodziak.

In other words, Lucic on a third line with better linemates might be way more productive. All of Backlund, Jankowski and Ryan play games much more similar to RNH than Brodziak.

Treliving is pretty good at identifying trade targets that are "about to pop". Lindholm, Hanifin, even Hamilton when he got him. I also think he tends to identify players that aren't fitting in with the team - Hamilton, Sven, etc.

I agree with you here. While Lucic only has Lucic to blame for not producing up the lineup, he has some excuses for his production down the lineup. Here, with the soft comp our 4th and 3rd lines often get, and the quality of Bennett, Mangiapane, and Ryan at the very least (and to a lesser extent Czarnik, Dube, and Jankowski) he will be more setup to succeed as a bottom sixer.

In particular I'd like to see Peters test out a Lucic-Bennett-Czarnik line. Size, speed, and balance all represented in different areas IMO.

I also think a Lucic-Ryan-Mangiapane line could replicate the success of our 4th line in the second half of last year. I was never really sold on Hathaway being a driver on that line... he's a better skater than Lucic but overall i feel we upgraded the skill here.

[ComixZone]

Originally Posted by dustygoon

What are you talking about? We added a NMC to our roster that requires protection which is something we didn't have before. Pretty simple. It is one extra player to protect that we didn't have to. Ya....no #### we have two years to maneuver around. You want to hide your head in the sand for two years.....have at it.

You do realize Lucic waiver his NMC to get traded here. Why wouldn’t he waive it to potentially go to Seattle?

If you want to run around in a manic hysteria for something two years away that will undoubtedly be a non-factor...have at it.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by btimbit

Even after sleeping on it I'm really not too upset. We traded a crappy player for a slightly cheaper crappy player. Big whoop

That's pretty much it.

The reason for the emotional red-lining, IMO, has a lot to do with the fact that it's Edmonton, and Lucic is a player that we have enjoyed trashing on for the last couple years. If it were Philly that he was coming from, I imagine most people would simply be saying "one bad contract for another"

[Jiri Hrdina]

I can see Neal getting some pp time with mcdavid but five on five he’s way too slow

[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by troutman

Why does Lucic have "less chance of bouncing back" than Neal? He is younger than Neal and going to a better team.

Degenerative back disease

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Bingo

That's pretty much me.

So having let this digest for 20 hours I'm at this point.

1. I never wanted Lucic on the Flames, yuck
2. I have to keep reminding myself that Neal has left as well, which removes some of the yuck
3. Lucic has the worse contract so you knew Edmonton had to kick something in
4. What Edmonton kicked in doesn't balance this for me so I don't get it
5. I wonder still if the Flames insisted Lucic waive his NMC, but havne't heard so and I'm nervous
6. They do have time to sort that out though including a buy out in two years
7. Lucic is a better fit of two players that don't fit because of physical play and not needing to play top six minutes to contribute
8. Guys like Gaudreau calling Lucic tells me the Flames top to bottom really wanted Neal gone
9. Which certainly pushes me to think it's more than the coach that had a problem with the guy

Pretty much exactly where I am.