Real Asset Management

With both, because Kubalik or Strome and their agent can take the Hawks to arbitration which as widely reported, Strome would likely award him $4m to $5m; that's also why the Hawks have had trouble trading him...too big of a risk for any team. With Kubalik, it's harder to say what arbitration would have given, but his QO is $4m and that is rich coming off of a subpar performance last season for him. As UFAs, they lose arbitration rights.

Real asset management is trading them, along with De Haan, at the deadline. You can only retain three salaries a year, this would limit them to only being able to retain on Kane and likely unable to trade Toews at all. And if Davidson’s plan is to build this team through the draft, which it seems to be after not getting a single prospect back for Debrincat and Dach, you trade Strome, Kubalik and De Haan for whatever pick you can get. Building only through the draft is not a good plan. But if it’s your plan you need all the picks you can get. Even if they are 3rd, 4th, 5th rounders. Asset management has been truly awful for this organization for quite a while. Davidson does not seem to be making it better.

I would have kept them because they need to over ripen prospects. I would stick players back in the minors etc and use those two as placeholders. Then hope you can move them for futures. I would also save my RS for Kane and Toews. Real asset mgmt to me is move Kane now while there are numerous teams available to trade with and more cap flexibility. Avoid the problem the Sens had with Stone and Duchene.

So what they go to arbitration? Trading them even after arbitration with 1/2 retained proves that whatever team they go to is getting a player at half their AAV market value. If you're rebuilding, you do not let players with value walk for nothing.



This is a good point, the could only do it with one of them. Still should have been done. They really should have traded the players rights for ANYTHING prior to the QO deadline.

You only have 3 retention spots, why would you waste those on players that aren't under contract and one of which (Kubalik) had a real down year and has a $4m qualify offer. Especially in the case of Kubalik is makes zero sense. Strome would have likely gotten $4.5M, some analysts say $5.5M. There's simply not that much value in using a retention spot versus using it on Kane as example who at $5.25M retained will get a nice haul back. McCabe and Murphy are two others that probably need to be moved eventually.