It potentially makes Lucic more attractive if they move on, in a trade to a team that needs to make the floor but is also cheap.
ETA: That said, people always talk about teams trading to make the floor but I don't know if I've ever seen a team struggle to do make the floor.
It doesn’t need to be a team that has to hit the floor. Just a team with ample cap space. Flames could encourage them to take the cap space as they don’t have to pay much salary. They’d have to add a sweetener though.
This is a good first attempt at moving out a crap contract without adding sweetener, for an overpaid player who can bring what we are lacking.
I'm surprised people are so optimistic about this one. We've made fun of Lucic and his terrible contract for years now, yet almost half of the users who voted "love" or at least "like" taking him on. I realize Neal was a huge disappointment, but at least there was a chance that his season was an outlier. Lucic has been trending down for a long time now, I really don't see a lot of upside there. The best realistic outcome to me is that we have added a 5.25m buyout-proof grinder who can't skate. I'd rather have kept Neal to see if there was anything left, to be honest ... and heck, I'd have prefered buying him out next year to taking on Lucics contract, but maybe that's just me.
oh well, I would love to be wrong about this and eat a ton of crow over the next couple of years.
I am pretty much meh on both sides of this one. I am curious to see how it shakes out. Lucic couldn't really play many meaningful games on a team that sat at the bottom year after year.
Oilers are not in a position to buyout Neal next year because you can't look at his buyout in isolation. Sure it is 1.9 and change. Then you have to add 750k from what they are retaining from the Lucic trade, plus the almost 4M from other buyouts. Pretty much 6.5M, which is a lot for a single season and for a team that should be competing now. They would have Lucic for another 3 years, Neal for 6, Sekera for 3 years, and still one more year of Pouliot.
Effectively it would handicap them for the majority of McDavid's prime years.
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Oilers are not in a position to buyout Neal next year because you can't look at his buyout in isolation. Sure it is 1.9 and change. Then you have to add 750k from what they are retaining from the Lucic trade, plus the almost 4M from other buyouts. Pretty much 6.5M, which is a lot for a single season and for a team that should be competing now. They would have Lucic for another 3 years, Neal for 6, Sekera for 3 years, and still one more year of Pouliot.
Effectively it would handicap them for the majority of McDavid's prime years.
Plus, when you buy out a guy you have to replace him. Now if you essentially replace him with someone sitting on the NHL bench, no cap hit. But if you trade for a replacement, sign someone else, or elevate a player from the AHL, you are adding salary.
Was talking with my bro about this trade over the last few days. He made a good point. The flames have been actively searching for a tough guy that can also somewhat play (Reeves, Maroon etc.). This instantly stops those conversations.
For me that's also a plus here. Imagine still having Neal and then finding and overpaying for a Reeves light or Maroon type player? That's 2 ugly "plug-gy" roster spots. This trade essentially puts us in a better money situation and stops the truculent search. Getting rid of Neal and stopping that search actually makes me feel pretty good about this.
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Maroon still out there. Almost like he has a handshake agreement with a team, a team, waiting to clear some cap room or get some clarity on their payroll situation.
Was talking with my bro about this trade over the last few days. He made a good point. The flames have been actively searching for a tough guy that can also somewhat play (Reeves, Maroon etc.). This instantly stops those conversations.
For me that's also a plus here. Imagine still having Neal and then finding and overpaying for a Reeves light or Maroon type player? That's 2 ugly "plug-gy" roster spots. This trade essentially puts us in a better money situation and stops the truculent search. Getting rid of Neal and stopping that search actually makes me feel pretty good about this.
The one silver lining I keep coming back to is no more Peluso like plugs in the lineup that can't play a five on five shift and don't do anything physical anyway.
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to clarify, I just meant I don't care about the owners saving actual dollars. It's not like this is a franchise with an internal cap or financial problems, so why would it matter to me as a fan? I do care about the salary cap savings, obviously.
That is fair. The on ice roster is dictated by cap allocation. Nothing wrong with people evaluating the on ice impact of the trade on that basis. Just have to recognize that you are not fully evaluating the trade, which is a business transaction affecting on ice product and other things too.
When people talk about evaluating the work of Treliving, and whether it is a good trade or not, the real dollars matter.
Two things
- 10 million dollars is not insignificant, even if you don’t care about it
- if, as some have said, Treliving has guidelines by which he must operate, such as not only operating against an annual salary cap, but also operating against a cash flow constraint (and say it is not to exceed the cap), then it may give him
flexibility in the Tkachuk negotiation, in terms of signing bonus
The trade itself is meh, whatever. For me the dislike comes from the Neal signing being so bad that a year later we have to bring in one of the worst contracts in the league to move him. It's hard to believe the Neal signing turned in to a disaster this quickly.
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Plus, when you buy out a guy you have to replace him. Now if you essentially replace him with someone sitting on the NHL bench, no cap hit. But if you trade for a replacement, sign someone else, or elevate a player from the AHL, you are adding salary.
They are pretty much a cap team with a good portion of the team made up of waiver fodder. Holland has some interesting decisions coming up, after this year he will have McDavid, Draisaitl, RNH (final year), Chaison, Neal, and Khaira signed up front. They need to graduate or sign a bunch of players. They may fall right back into that UFA trap where you overpay in term and salary for players. They are stuck in between a rebuild and retool.
The one silver lining I keep coming back to is no more Peluso like plugs in the lineup that can't play a five on five shift and don't do anything physical anyway.
And guys like Peluso were only used from the bench to try to stand up to guys like Lucic who can deliver some very big hits.
I would rather have this (even if he's slow, over the hill and not scoring much) than a useless slow Neal.
Flames got manhandled multiple times last year, especially the playoffs. We can't have guys like Hamonic fighting guys like Gudbrandson simply because we have no one else available, but hey Gudbrandson sure learned his lesson from Hamonic.
Lucic addresses that lack of toughness and Treleving did it with negative value Neal that is likely to drop significantly in value by end of the year if he doesn't go back in pre Flames form.
It potentially makes Lucic more attractive if they move on, in a trade to a team that needs to make the floor but is also cheap.
ETA: That said, people always talk about teams trading to make the floor but I don't know if I've ever seen a team struggle to do make the floor.
Look no further than what the Sens are doing this year. They have actively pursued players with higher caphit's than actual money owed due to bonuses. They have also had to overpay a marginal player in Hainsey, put 9.5M on the IR (between Gaborik and McCarthur), and have a 3M dollar third string goalie to reach the cap floor.
Anisimov - 4.55 Caphit for two more years (only 5M owed)
Boedker - 4M Caphit (3M owed)
Brown - 2.1M Caphit (1.6 owed)
Zaitsev - 4.5M Caphit (only 1.5M owed this season - since they got Toronto to pay the bonus prior to the trade)
Real dollars payed out this season is only 47.1M while the cap floor is 60.24M
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Look no further than what the Sens are doing this year. They have actively pursued players with higher caphit's than actual money owed due to bonuses. They have also had to overpay a marginal player in Hainsey, put 9.5M on the IR (between Gaborik and McCarthur), and have a 3M dollar third string goalie to reach the cap floor.
Anisimov - 4.55 Caphit for two more years (only 5M owed)
Boedker - 4M Caphit (3M owed)
Brown - 2.1M Caphit (1.6 owed)
Zaitsev - 4.5M Caphit (only 1.5M owed this season - since they got Toronto to pay the bonus prior to the trade)
Real dollars payed out this season is only 47.1M while the cap floor is 60.24M
Thanks. I was thinking the Sens, but hadn't done the homework.
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to clarify, I just meant I don't care about the owners saving actual dollars. It's not like this is a franchise with an internal cap or financial problems, so why would it matter to me as a fan? I do care about the salary cap savings, obviously.
Even if what you say is true, saving close to $10M in real dollars may make a future buyout more palatable. Which, of course, does have cap implications.
Even cap teams often have a limit to how much money they want to spend on buyouts.
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The one silver lining I keep coming back to is no more Peluso like plugs in the lineup that can't play a five on five shift and don't do anything physical anyway.
No Grossmen PTO, no Hamonic broken face game one, No CTE early in his career for Bennett. Lucic is over paid, but he does take some pressure off other players.
I'm not defending the trade, but taking Neal out of the equation, there is definitely a difference between signing Lucic as a free agent to a 7 year/6 million per contract and trading for him with a 4 year/5.25 per remaining.
The ribbing of Edmonton was more than warranted.
Last edited by CalgaryFan1988; 07-26-2019 at 11:05 AM.
Reason: typo
i'm not defending the trade, but taking neal out of the equation, there is definitely a difference between signing lucic as a free agent to a 7 year/6 million per contract and trading for him with a 4 year/5.75 per remaining.
The ribbing of edmonton was more than warranted.
5.25
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I wonder what kind of positive effect a lack of Neal will have on his two most frequent linemates.
Bennett fought like he was the only player on the ice when the third line was dispatched, but Jankowski took on too much of the Neal "floating" mentality.
Do we see a more pass friendly Bennett, or a more engaged Jankowski?
__________________
"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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You're right ... he could have been so lazy he didn't call anyone!
Not sure I get what you mean. Not about laziness. You’re kind of assuming Tre is actively shopping Neal and Lucic is only option left.
Whereas one reasonable possibility is that Holland is shopping Lucic like crazy and Tre is only one listening. This is maybe people’s belief that sweetener could have been better.
Last edited by Strange Brew; 07-26-2019 at 11:26 AM.
