Poor guy

Huh

At 5 million Smith is a CAP DUMP. Why would anyone take his entire contract and pay to do it.
Utah isn't Arizona they won't be taking salary to reach the floor with 33 year old 3rd/4th liners.
To get any return you're retaining half then it's marginal at best.

Ok regard

This sentiment is getting old, someone will pay a late round pick for him, it’s mostly up to his MNTC. Beauvillier and Zucker both got traded without retention or payment, and they both have similar cap hits to smith, BOTH do not have the production or the experience smith has, and smith can play PK and PP. its getting out of hand hes not that far removed from being an impact player on a Stanley cup winning team, someone will take him, without retention and also not taking picks from us.

let me just file this between, Gudbranson can never be traded and Matthesion will cost a 1st to move.

I like the simplicity.
I would play Koivunen over Puustinen. I don't think he's an NHL level player. He's like Robertson in TOR. Good when other people carry him on their back, but really that's no help to the team.
Maybe we can trade him to TOR for a 2nd.

I also like Rakell on the 1st line. Because the only way to dump that contract is to pump him up, right?

Past that the 3rd pairing is total garbage but maybe Pickering can fix the year after. Who knows.

Neither of those comments were made by me. GLWT

IMO the sharks would pay a late pick for him, especially if Celebrini and smith are in the lineup, great guy for them to develop around, and to help lead with the lack of vets there

Sure maybe you don't need to spend all the money right now - but we need to do something to improve the team. I don't think you need to sit on 10mil+ in cap space, could be even more if you play Blom over Ned.

Do you think Eller and Smith carried Puustinen?

he got a lot of time on the top line which is where his points came from.

7.5% of his 5v5 time was spent with Crosby and he had 1 point

I think going into this year a big thing is going to be getting production out of young players, if it doesn’t work I can see us taking advantage of our cap flexibility to trade for another player or possibly sign a free agent

Sure I agree, and I'm not against playing some young guys. But you can still sign another defenseman and another winger and have room for Poulin, Puustinen, Ponomarev, and St Ivany/POJ in the starting lineup. I'm just not sure we have the luxury of taking a year off and spending money/trading next offseason when everyone is a year older. Also, I think part of the value of playing young guys is that you get to spend money elsewhere to make the team around them better.