Quoting: F50marco
I rarely use "They'd hang up immediately" but I will for that Barzal trade. Sorry Caps fans, that Isle fan that suggested must of been on something. No way in hell they'd accept that.
Well, it sounded like a nice offer, even if it would put a fork in Washington's Cup chances for the year. I don't want to sit here and argue too long about someone Hockey's Future still calls a "C"prospect:
http://www.hockeysfuture.com/prospect-rankings/new-york-islanders-top-20-prospects/
And if you scroll down to #18 on that list of Islanders prospects, you get to Devon Toews, whom I traded for as a joke on here, last summer, along with Evander Kane, in a post titled, hilariously, Kane and Toews. Buffalo fans shrugged, but Islanders fans totally shut me down on thinking I could get Devin Toews for a prospect and a 2nd. He's going to be elite, they told me.
Barzal is pretty good. He's still not facing opponents' top defensemen because he's not playing with Tavares, but behind him in the lineup at even strength, but he is on a pace for thirty goals, and that's no mean feat. I'm just not sure that Bellows or Dal Colle or a bunch of other Islanders prospects wouldn't be scoring a similar amount of goals the way the Islanders are clicking right now offensively, and I think they would win more games if they had better defensemen this year, rather than guys like D. Toews, who might be great in a decade.
The Islanders have the second most goals in the Eastern Conference right now, but the most goals against. Tampa has scored 56 more goals than they've given up. The Islanders have given up 16 more than they've scored. Even if the Islanders hang on for a wildcard playoff spot this year, they won't last five games. The Islanders fan who suggested trading a promising youngster for a proven shutdown defenseman whose teams have won the first round or more in five straight years wasn't the one having difficulties grasping reality.
If you figure that any new rookie next year will do as well as Barzal is this year, then it's just good salary cap management to trade Barzal to a contender while he's hot, and try to get back a reasonably priced two way defenseman. I don't think they picked Niskanen by accident. I think that trade actually is better for NYI than for Washington, the way the teams are built this year, but if Washington considers retooling, since their positive gf/ga differential is only +13, and it's hard to know if they could compete with even Boston or Toronto, to say nothing of Pittsburgh, Tampa,, or Vegas..... if Washington sells, Niskanen, Backstrom,and Holtby would be the biggest prizes. Ovechkin and Kuznetsov are amazing offensive players, but they get paid like it, so in a salary cap league, their trade value might be less than Niskanen's. Barzal is unique in that he's scoring a lot but isn't getting paid much yet, so he'd be a really, really good trade chip right now, if a team had a ton of great talent like Bellows, Dal Colle, Ho Sang, Toews.... etc, etc, waiting in the wings.