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You know what time it is: Thursday Think Tank.
Karlsson to Vegas?
We know that there were multiple teams involved in trade talks surrounding Erik Karlsson before the trade deadline, and Vegas was a team that negotiated with Ottawa until the very end, before opting for Tomas Tatar as their acquisition instead.
Pierre Dorion has said that he won’t be trading Karlsson
at the draft, but that obviously doesn’t exclude him from trading him after the draft. Since late February, my belief has been that Karlsson isn’t going to be re-signed, and for that reason, I could definitely see him being dealt some time shortly after the draft. Renaud Lavoie opened up the trade rumour talks again by pointing out the connection with Vegas:
It makes total sense for the Knights, especially if they don’t win the Cup. Right now, they have ~$26.5M in cap space, and while they do have some players due for a significant raise like Shea Theodore, Colin Miller, and William Karlsson, they could still easily fit both Karlsson
and Bobby Ryan if Ottawa wants to dump his contract too.
They’re a team that somehow has a decent amount of assets out there, as Cody Glass, Nick Suzuki, and Erik Brannstrom are all solid first round picks, they still own a plethora of picks over the next few years, plus players like Alex Tuch and Colin Miller could be moved. There will surely be other teams interested in Karlsson like Washington, San Jose, Nashville, maybe Tampa Bay, and maybe a surprise team, but Vegas has a leg up because it seems like Melnyk wants to save tons of money in this deal by moving Ryan.
After all, Ryan
did think him and Karlsson were off to Vegas before the deadline anyway:
Hoffman Rumours
Along with talk about Karlsson being on the move, Mike Hoffman’s name has been on the rumour mill since December. It seemed like talk of him moving died down once he found some chemistry with Matt Duchene, but perhaps Dorion also wasn’t loving the offers that he was receiving.
Then yesterday the rumours re-ignited, as Darren Dreger and Pierre LeBrun
believe he’s even more likely than Karlsson to be moved:
“The Mike Hoffman trade rumours are back in full swing, picking up from where they were most of this past season. Except this time, there seems to be more bite to it. My TSN colleague Darren Dreger reported on Insider Trading Wednesday that the expectation is that the goal-scoring winger will indeed be dealt and likely at or around the draft, the Senators getting lots of interest in him and looking for multiple pieces in return.”
As I stated back in December, trading Hoffman would almost assuredly be a no-win situation, because it is incredibly hard to find 60-point scoring wingers that cost a shade over $5M in their prime. There’s a chance that a team overpays for Hoffman, but any move with him reeks of a salary dump.
Perhaps a team like the Edmonton Oilers are willing to give up their 10th overall pick and another asset, but I’m not even sure I’d want to make that deal. The problem is that any trade involving Hoffman or Karlsson would make the team much worse, and it would signal that they are punting the upcoming season. Most years I’d be fine with that, but not having a first round pick in 2019 makes this situation much more difficult.
I’d still much rather try to go for it in the next couple seasons by re-signing their core and adding on the margins, but that seems unlikely at this point. Sadly, it feels like at least one of Karlsson or Hoffman will be gone this summer.
Dare to Dream
I feel like putting this out there, but I have to preface that it is just a rumour. Then again, people come on this website for rumours, so it’s worth sharing.
There’s been a lot of chatter in the past few days about Eugene Melnyk essentially being forced to sell the Senators, but only once the Stanley Cup Finals are over so as to not hog the spotlight. I have no idea about the validity about this talk, and we’ve been filled with false hope plenty of times. The first time I heard about this was from a Twitter account that is now protected, and I don’t follow him so I don’t feel comfortable sharing it on here.
I’ve been told though (and seen in a few other places) that Melnyk failed to make the two final payments of the season, and that the NHL covered him for those debts. However, with how bad Melnyk’s financial situation is, the league apparently isn’t going to cover him any longer, and a sale might be coming soon. There has always been chatter about Daniel Alfredsson potentially coming back to the organization as part of a new ownership group, and if the team is actually sold, I’d expect him to come back.
Even as I write these words, I don’t fully believe it. I’m just the messenger here, and I’ll believe it when I see it, considering how many times Melnyk has said that he’s never going to sell. However, on the surface, the rumour at least makes sense because we’ve known for a while that Melnyk has been running an extremely cheap operation due to how much money he had been losing. Furthermore, it seems like plenty of people with “sources” around the team have been talking about a potential sale for a long time, so it’s not as if this it out of nowhere. I hope that there is something to these rumours, because that will be a momentous day when new ownership comes in.
The biggest thing holding the Senators back right now and in the future is their inability to spend on and off the ice. An owner with deeper pockets can hopefully change that.
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