Official Armchair GM Thread 2015-2016

[Britishbulldog]

I think if Columbus was serious about trading their pick then somebody else offers a better deal than the Leafs could put together.

Maybe. But it's not strictly about making the best value offer. The way they talked about what Columbus would be looking for it would have to:

A) Involve some good pieces that would help a team immediately but aren't too expensive
B) Involve taking bad money back

There are a lot of teams who have good pieces, even good inexpensive pieces, but not many who have good inexpensive pieces like JVR who aren't really important to the team they're on and can eat some bad money.

Nik, I have been thinking about this all week.  I had never considered this angle before.  If the Leafs offer Bernier to a team and eat $2 MIL of his contract the Leafs could really boost CLB's team and eat 3 terrible contracts that would all be expired in 3 years when the Leafs should be hitting their stride.

With CLBs need at center, 3rd pairing D and Hartnell being a healthy scratch this year as well as Korpisalo stepping up I would suggest something like this:
Hartnell $4.75 3 yrs, J Johnson $4.36 2 yrs, Bobrovsky $7.425 3 yrs and 3rd pick overall for Bozak, JVR, Komarov and Hunwick.  Throw in a blue chip prospect if need be.

That would give a solid forward core of: Kadri, Nylander, Marner, Matthews, Puljujarvi.... and possibly Stamkos and Vesey.

With Michalek, Laich and Greening coming of the books next season's end (over $11 MIL), J Johnson would be off the following season with Hartnell and Bobrovsky freeing up over $12 MIL the 3rd season.  That would be over $28 MIL freed up to re-sign the core plus I expect the cap will rise $3 MIL a year.

Is 5 good Leafs (including a good prospect) and helping remove 3 terrible contracts for the cash strapped Blue Jackets enough value for the 3rd pick?

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

I think if Columbus was serious about trading their pick then somebody else offers a better deal than the Leafs could put together.

Maybe. But it's not strictly about making the best value offer. The way they talked about what Columbus would be looking for it would have to:

A) Involve some good pieces that would help a team immediately but aren't too expensive
B) Involve taking bad money back

There are a lot of teams who have good pieces, even good inexpensive pieces, but not many who have good inexpensive pieces like JVR who aren't really important to the team they're on and can eat some bad money.

Nik, I have been thinking about this all week.  I had never considered this angle before.  If the Leafs offer Bernier to a team and eat $2 MIL of his contract the Leafs could really boost CLB's team and eat 3 terrible contracts that would all be expired in 3 years when the Leafs should be hitting their stride.

With CLBs need at center, 3rd pairing D and Hartnell being a healthy scratch this year as well as Korpisalo stepping up I would suggest something like this:
Hartnell $4.75 3 yrs, J Johnson $4.36 2 yrs, Bobrovsky $7.425 3 yrs and 3rd pick overall for Bozak, JVR, Komarov and Hunwick.  Throw in a blue chip prospect if need be.

That would give a solid forward core of: Kadri, Nylander, Marner, Matthews, Puljujarvi.... and possibly Stamkos and Vesey.

With Michalek, Laich and Greening coming of the books next season's end (over $11 MIL), J Johnson would be off the following season with Hartnell and Bobrovsky freeing up over $12 MIL the 3rd season.  That would be over $28 MIL freed up to re-sign the core plus I expect the cap will rise $3 MIL a year.

Is 5 good Leafs (including a good prospect) and helping remove 3 terrible contracts for the cash strapped Blue Jackets enough value for the 3rd pick?

Absolutely, disgusting deal, I mean pure garbage.

Your trade amounts to:

To Toronto:

Jesse Puljuj?rvi

To Columbus

Bozak - 50pts 2nd/3rd line centre, faceoff guy with pretty decent price performance.
JVR - Outstanding contract, pair him with decent linemates and he's close to a lock for 25/30 goals.
Komarov - Very good 3rd line guy on a good contract who can be the energy third man on your top two lines.
Hunwick - I'm not a fan in the role Toronto had him, but I think he'd be a very reliable 3rd pairing guy if he's given the other teams bottom six most nights.
A Blue Chip Prospect. (So, Kapanen, Brown?)


All for Jesse Puljuj?rvi who might be as good as JVR someday.

 

[ZBBM]

Crap on the specifics as you wish but the general concept has merit.

 

[bustaheims]

Crap on the specifics as you wish but the general concept has merit.

I don't know. That trade proposal is so ugly that it really throws the entire concept into question. How much bad money would the Leafs have to eat/how many quality assets would they have to sacrifice to get the pick? All the plausible scenarios I can come up with have them giving up too much or taking on too much to make it worthwhile. As much as Columbus may see there being a big drop-off between 2 and 3, to get them to trade all the way down into the mid-20s is going to be prohibitively expensive. It's an interesting move in theory, but I don't think it's one that actually works in practice.

 

[Britishbulldog]

Crap on the specifics as you wish but the general concept has merit.

I don't know. That trade proposal is so ugly that it really throws the entire concept into question. How much bad money would the Leafs have to eat/how many quality assets would they have to sacrifice to get the pick? All the plausible scenarios I can come up with have them giving up too much or taking on too much to make it worthwhile. As much as Columbus may see there being a big drop-off between 2 and 3, to get them to trade all the way down into the mid-20s is going to be prohibitively expensive. It's an interesting move in theory, but I don't think it's one that actually works in practice.

That's the question for me.  So....
Hartnell ($4.75 3 yrs), J Johnson ($4.36 2 yrs), and 3rd pick overall for Bozak, Hunwick, and a blue chip prospect like Leipsic if need be?

All that is doing is freeing up CLB from 2 of their many bad contracts and really not getting good enough players (like a JVR or Kessel) to help them win now.  Does the cap space mean enough to Columbus to give up a 3rd overall?  Unlike T Bay, they really don't need the space to re-sign players the next couple of years. 

Similar to Arizona theoretically wanting Matthews.  It would take so much that it typically wouldn't be worth it.

 

[Kin]

Is 5 good Leafs (including a good prospect) and helping remove 3 terrible contracts for the cash strapped Blue Jackets enough value for the 3rd pick?

I never really know if I'm supposed to respond to your trade proposals like they're real or if they're just intended as abstract thought experiments. Trades like that don't happen and there's a reason they don't happen is the best I can do. 

 

[Kin]

I don't know. That trade proposal is so ugly that it really throws the entire concept into question. How much bad money would the Leafs have to eat/how many quality assets would they have to sacrifice to get the pick? All the plausible scenarios I can come up with have them giving up too much or taking on too much to make it worthwhile. As much as Columbus may see there being a big drop-off between 2 and 3, to get them to trade all the way down into the mid-20s is going to be prohibitively expensive. It's an interesting move in theory, but I don't think it's one that actually works in practice.

I really don't think you need to get into sprawling madness to talk about it though. Basically my thought process on a realistic proposal boils down to wondering how much value JVR essentially has on his own + taking on a bad contract + relatively minor additional assets from the Leafs("Blue Chip" is being used pretty liberally here).

So essentially a trade a long the lines of:

JVR + Pittsburgh's pick + one of the San Jose 2nd's for Tyutin and the 3rd overall. Then you shop the #3 down 4 or 5 spots in the hopes that you can land one of the better defensemen in the draft.

This is all also sort of with the expectation that JVR is likely on the block anyway and the idea, hopefully, is to use him to try and add to the prospect base on the blueline.

Likely? No. But you really don't have to stitch together huge amounts of bad money/legit assets to find something that at the very least makes sense provided we're working in the framework I talked about re: Columbus' views on the draft.

 

[Britishbulldog]

Is 5 good Leafs (including a good prospect) and helping remove 3 terrible contracts for the cash strapped Blue Jackets enough value for the 3rd pick?

I never really know if I'm supposed to respond to your trade proposals like they're real or if they're just intended as abstract thought experiments. Trades like that don't happen and there's a reason they don't happen is the best I can do.

I can appreciate that. They are definitely abstract thought experiments.  Pure fantasy speculation usually.

With the life I lead I rarely have chance to watch hockey anymore leaving me to simply read opinions and search stats.  I come on here to get opinions and suggestions from folks who have their finger more on the pulse.

 

[Kin]

I can appreciate that. They are definitely abstract thought experiments.  Pure fantasy speculation usually.

With the life I lead I rarely have chance to watch hockey anymore leaving me to simply read opinions and search stats.  I come on here to get opinions and suggestions from folks who have their finger more on the pulse.

Yeah, I think the reason though that they come off as so hard to wrap your head around is just that trades are so complicated these days, front offices needing to do so much research on a player(hopefully) that the bigger you make it the less feasible it seems.

Like just take the case of Scott Hartnell. You describe him as a "healthy scratch" which he was this year a couple of times but he played 79 games and had 23 goals/49 points. He was 53rd in the entire league in points per 60 at 5v5. His advanced numbers aren't great but they're not terrible considering his surroundings.

Is he just a pure salary dump? Maybe more to the point, how would he feel about coming to Toronto. He's got a NMC, so he'd have to agree to the deal.

A team would probably have to do a deep dive on him, find out if his scratches were legitimate or just a case of clashing with Tortorella. Watch film, talk to their coaches and scouts...and then imagine they would want to pay the same attention to all 8 or 9 guys you're talking about all within the context of a single trade. 

 

[bustaheims]

Mirtle was musing last night about the possibility of Dallas needing to seriously re-examine their goaltending situation, and, naturally, it led me to think of how the Leafs could take advantage of that. Both Dallas goalies have 2 years left on their deals, and neither really stood out as better than the other this season. On top of the goalie issue, there's been some rumblings about unhappiness with/from Nichushkin.

So, with that in mind, I found myself pondering plausibility of a deal along the lines of Bernier for Lehtonen and Nichushkin. The Stars get some cap relief for 16/17, out of the contact a year earlier, and a potential upgrade in goal of Bernier can find his game. The Leafs get a stop-gap goalie and a big young winger with significant potential.

If he can show some of the form we saw in his first few months as a Leaf, Bernier is a better fit for Dallas' window of opportunity, because, well, it's basically now for them and they need a goalie who can be at his peak for the next 3-5 years. He doesn't have the same value for the Leafs, as their window is still at least a couple years away from opening. Lehtonen doesn't help then, but, he provides some stability for the next couple years while the Leafs search for their long-term guy. Obviously, the real prize here is Nichushkin. His NHL numbers haven't been impressive, but, when you watch him, you can see the skill - and, of course, being 6'4", 205+ doesn't hurt.

Thoughts?

 

[Frank E]

Mirtle was musing last night about the possibility of Dallas needing to seriously re-examine their goaltending situation, and, naturally, it led me to think of how the Leafs could take advantage of that.

Naturally. 

 

[Kin]

I don't hate the idea of it, some size on the wing would be nice and Lehtonen seems fine enough as a stop gap, but I wonder if that only really makes sense if it's tied to something more significant like a JVR trade. If Nichushkin is available(and I think his NHL numbers are pretty decent considering his age) because he's unhappy in Dallas I think you'd have to ask why and in what ways the Leafs are willing or able to address that. Is it a playing time thing? Because I don't see Nichushkin as being someone who steps automatically into a top 6 role given the team's depth at the position.

The other thing, and I'm half remembering this so it might be wrong, is that I thought I'd heard somewhere that Lehtonen has conditioning issues and while that's not a big deal to me, I don't think you want more of what we saw with the media and Kessel.

So, yeah, I don't know if I make that move unless I have a big role in mind for Nichushkin and I'm pretty confident in Lehtonen's ability to be a good example or at least not invite controversy.

 

[bustaheims]

The other thing, and I'm half remembering this so it might be wrong, is that I thought I'd heard somewhere that Lehtonen has conditioning issues and while that's not a big deal to me, I don't think you want more of what we saw with the media and Kessel.

I understand the concern there, but I wonder if the media would be as focused on it with Lehtonen A) because of the state of the team and the clear direction they're heading, and B) unlike Kessel, Lehtonen won't be seen as a focal-point type player - he won't be on an expensive long-term deal, the team wouldn't have sacrificed significant assets to acquire him or be looking to build around him, etc. If he were being brought in to fix the goaltending situation, that would have been an issue, but in a deal where he's basically the anchor attached to the quality prospect, I don't think it will be.

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

If it was the Bernier from his LA days then I think that is closer to being a fair trade.

I mean did I miss something with Nichushkin, his stock despite injury, is surely still much higher than this?

You're asking them to give up on a former #10 overall pick for Bernier who just had a car crash of a year.

I mean if I'm Dallas, I seriously consider if I'd even trade Lehtonen for Bernier straight up, probably would because of the contract, but that's it.

I mean the trade is so bad I went back and read your post several times to see if I missed something.

 

[bustaheims]

If it was the Bernier from his LA days then I think that is closer to being a fair trade.

I mean did I miss something with Nichushkin, his stock despite injury, is surely still much higher than this?

You're asking them to give up on a former #10 overall pick for Bernier who just had a car crash of a year.

I mean if I'm Dallas, I seriously consider if I'd even trade Lehtonen for Bernier straight up, probably would because of the contract, but that's it.

I mean the trade is so bad I went back and read your post several times to see if I missed something.

Bernier's "car crash" of a season still saw him put up similar numbers to Lehtonen, but at almost $2M less on the cap, and with one season less on his contract. Swapping Lehtonen for Bernier is basically pure upside for Dallas. Worst case scenario for the Stars, it's a sideways move in terms of talent with some cap relief. Best case - improved goaltending for cheaper. There's very little risk involved from their POV - which translates to them having to sacrifice something of value.

I only bring up Nichushkin because there are already rumblings about there being unhappiness there, and there's a good chance he's going to be moved. In a straight up deal, his value is probably roughly that of a 2nd round pick right now - 3 years removed from being drafted, already one major injury, not exactly putting up huge numbers in the NHL so far - maybe slightly higher, which would make this deal fairly comparable to the Winnik-Laich deal.

 

[Kin]

 
I understand the concern there, but I wonder if the media would be as focused on it with Lehtonen A) because of the state of the team and the clear direction they're heading, and B) unlike Kessel, Lehtonen won't be seen as a focal-point type player - he won't be on an expensive long-term deal, the team wouldn't have sacrificed significant assets to acquire him or be looking to build around him, etc. If he were being brought in to fix the goaltending situation, that would have been an issue, but in a deal where he's basically the anchor attached to the quality prospect, I don't think it will be.

Probably not, no, definitely not to the same extent. That is, it's fair to say, a relatively minor concern all things considered. That said, while Lehtonen doesn't need to be a great goalie over the course of his deal(in fact it might be better if he isn't) you do want him to at least be good enough to not be an impediment if the team improves faster than expected.

So I guess for me it's more saying that balancing the good things Nichushkin brings to the table vs. going out there and being a little more selective about who's in net over the next few years. Sure, the media stuff is part of it(and I'm sure it would be the usual split of the good writers writing good stuff and guys like Simmons writing garbage) but I also don't want to entirely write off the idea that Kessel's not great habits genuinely didn't play terrifically within the room. The question for me is if Nichushkin is a big enough get to commit such a big part of the team to Lehtonen over the next few years.

 

[Peter D.]

Bernier for Lehthonen and Nichushkin would be a flat out steal. 

 

[Highlander]

Bernier for a bowling ball and some brillo pads would be an outright steal as well.

 

[WhatIfGodWasALeaf]

Bernier for a bowling ball and some brillo pads would be an outright steal as well.

 

[Tigger]

Bernier for Lehthonen and Nichushkin would be a flat out steal.

Depends on the contract Nichushkin is looking for but, yeah.