Taking a pause from our regularly scheduled programming, I am putting together this simple article in response to the recent major trade that just occurred.
Colorado obviously did not feel they were going to be able to resign Rantanen at a price they would feel comfortable with, and in turn made a blockbuster trade with Carolina acquiring both Martin Necas and Jack Drury. Chicago acted as a 3rd party in regards to some salary retention and gaining limited assets for also dealing Taylor Hall to Carolina. What does this mean for Casey Mittlestadt’s role with Colorado?
Many of us wish the Sabres had the mettle to make a trade of this nature, but unfortunately at least in this case it was not to be. Beyond talking about the Rantanen trade, there will likely be other deals that occur as time ticks closer to the trade deadline. What are you hoping to see? Do you expect this to be an active trade deadline or most major deals occurring before the actual day itself?
Focusing back in on the Sabres, I would like to like at this from two different perspectives. The first viewpoint is if the Sabres were to magically get back into possible playoff contention, and viewed themselves as buying (or retooling) – who would you like for them to target across the league? And what would you be willing to give up to attain that target? For the purpose of making this slightly more plausible –> lets only look at opposing team players without a full NMC or a less than 15 team NTC.
On the flip side – if the Sabres continue their current trajectory towards a bottom 5 finish and look to be sellers at the deadline, who would you want to give up? And what would you expect in return for those players? For me, I would like the Sabres to pick either Power or Byram, and maximize assets in return for one of the two players. If we can “offload” Samuelsson that would be ideal as well. Lastly we need to prioritize identifying the new core of the team, and what young player have the potential and deserve the spots of being top 6 players.
Does it seem likely that GMKA is still in place by the trade deadline, it certainly seems that way. Will he have the ability and confidence to pull off a major trade, or will we only see minor transactions and try to run it back again next year with better luck and more experience as we have continued to hear on repeat since the start of the season.
Looking forward to seeing everyone’s thoughts in this thread – very curious to see some creative ideas that may come from this posting. My next article will get back to the regular one trade by team concept, but wanted to throw this out there in the meantime.
Thanks everyone, always appreciate your comments and feedback.
Go Sabres!!