Kings Trade Only Good Player for Washing Machine
Like little kids that just want to play with their brothers and cousins, running behind them as quickly as their stunted legs can carry them, the Los Angeles Kings and the Buffalo Sabres have come together for a deal.
The Kings were clearly upset at having one decent player that made the rest of the team look bad. They have shipped out Evgeni Malkin, Scott Harrington, Brayden Burke and Nathan Legare in return for Micheal Backlund, Henri Jokiharju, Kirill Marchenko and Akil Thomas.
Buffalo sees a gamebreaker in Malkin, as solid defensive d-man in Harrington, a point per game AHLer in Burke, and Malkin's future RW in Legare.
The Kings build around defense in Backlund, a potential future second pairing d-man in Jokiharju, KHL wunderkind Marchenko and another C/LW King prospect.
The reasoning for the Kings is that those are a lot of high risk/high reward players, anchored by the steady and perennial 71OVR for eternity Backlund. I really only need one of the three prospects to hit for this to come out even for me, although the payoff is waiting two years for Marchenko and Thomas. Looking for a big year from Jokiharju next year in a revamped IRL Buffalo.
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"We don't even know who our best player is yet. It could be any one of us at this point." - Peter LaFleur, player/coach, Average Joe's Gymnasium
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