That’s a whole lot of crap. And a pass from Canes.

Whole lot of crap? That’s major over payment by the Caps. Burakovsky is a potential top 6 player. Bowey is a future top 4 and Vanacek will be in the NHL in three years contending for a starting job. The draft picks just make it worse.

3rd liner, a guy with potential but hasn’t looked good yet. Slighlty above average goalie prospect, mediocre picks.....yup....whole lot of crap. 1st and prospect will do.

Bowey had 11 even strength points last year. Faulk had 12. Burakovsky, without loooking it up, probably had more than one.

I'm still in the camp that, while the Caps made the right move in trading for rental veterans for the playoffs, as evidenced by how many minutes Trotz felt comfortable giving Kempny, and how that helped keep Orlov and ,
Orpik a bit fresherBowey and Djoos are coming along fine and ready to start next season.

Faulk has some years when he's brilliant at evens, but he isn't necessary for the Caps' power play, and his past offensive numbers will lead to a high cap hit soon. This provides great insurance in case Carlson or Niskanen gets injured, so it's not bad, but I think that Faulk might have played about 50% more minutes than Bowey, so coming out with only one more point at even strength is quite underwhelming. Which one is actually bettter? I don't know. But I know which one is younger, and spent last year working on his defense under the Caps' new head coach's direction.

If Reirden doesn't want Bowey back, I think Bowey and a 2nd for Faulk would be about fair. Bowey and Burakovsky is an overpayment. Bowey outscored Haydn Fleury last year, in similar minutes, but with slightly less sheltered zone starts. He did just fine for a rookie, and I'm not worried about him.

Faulk was -26 last year. His team took 55% of the shots when he was on the ice, but he started 58% of his shifts ahead of the red line. That says he got caught pinching in too far, a lot, and gave up too many odd man rushes. I like the experience, and the minutes played, and the minutes per game. Obviously he's a very talented player, but Reirden is going to cut him to about 18 minutes, get Orlov to babysit him, and give him a list of things to work on so he isn't hurting the team's chances by giving up regular breakaways at evens. I mean, the guy's -109 in his career? I can see why Carolina would consider moving him. I don't think the price is right, here, but I'm not rejecting the idea.

Burakovsky got six points in 140 total minutes in the playoffs. Auston Matthews got two points in 123 minutes in the playoffs this year. Rick Nash got 5 points in 194 minutes this Spring. So, when it counts, and when Trotz let him play at all, he is better than two different first overall picks, whom some people consider top six forwards, already. Yes, he often skated with Lars Eller this last regular season. I think he still did okay.

OEL is -73. John Taveras -42. Erik Karlsson is -37. Anton Stralman is +60. I think it’s pretty safe to say that +/- stat is F***ing useless. It is more team based than indivdual and often time out of the individuals control even when they are on the ice.

Burky has 2nd line talent, produces like a 4th liner and has no heart. He has been in the league long enough that his trade value is based on who he is rather than his potential. Bowey is a nice piece but hasn’t been impressive thus far. Vanecek has 2 years in the AHL and has sv% under .900.

I agree Bowey and 2nd is about the right value though. But considering where that 2nd is likely to be....pushing 60th. Might take the 1st to do it.

Personally, I think this trade does not give up important pieces of the caps future, and will return something quite good in value. I will acknowledge that trading Burk could hurt the future a little bit because our forward prospect pool is not a strength (maybe Gersich, Axel JF, Pilon, Sutter, or Clark could fill that void in the future) but the emergence of Vrana has made Burk expendable. The loss of Bowey is not too bad because of how strong our defense pipeline is. Trading Vanecek also does not really affect the future because we got Samsonov.

Trips to the Cup FInals: 0, 0, 0, 2.

I know whom I'd trade Bowey and Burakovsky for.

Burakovsky and Vrana got the same number of points in the playoffs, but Burakovsky was a healthy scratch for half of the games in the playoffs.

Bowey scored back to back sixty point seasons in juniors. Who does that? If he ever gets some power play opportunities, he should be a really special player.

I think Bowey and a 2nd is fair value, but it puts Washington over the salary cap this year, by three million dollars.

So the available choices are more like, "Burakovsky for Faulk," or "Bowey and Burakovsky for Faulk and Fleury/Bean/pick/whatever.."

That is dumb logic. Cam Ward won a Cup. Carey Price, Lundqvist, Rinne, Bobrovsky haven’t. Does thst mean Ward is better to you?

Team success and individual talent are 2 different things. Whuh us why +/- stat is a useless evaluator of talent. The only thing it is good for, if snything at all, is to compare plsyers on the same team obver 1 seadon.

But it's a team sport. All of the stats measure team success. Chandler Stephenson got a lot of points playing with Nick Backstrom in the playoffs, but not quite as many playing with Jay Beagle. Justin WIlliams was a clutch goal scorer in playoffs when he was on lines with Eric Staal, or with LA's best, but on a Caps' second line with rookie Evgeny Kuznetsov, he was no longer "Mr. Game Seven." Goals are a team stat. Assists are even more of a team stat. Until they put all the players through the skills competition in training camp and publish their results, all we have are team stats and vague impressions.

The Hawks just signed Ward for 3M while guys with better stats in recent years like Pavelec and Lehner were still available, and apparently at lower prices. Yes. Ward is absolutely valued based on how good of a streak he can put together in the playoffs, when it counts more. That is correct. I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad idea, but that is also apparently why the Caps signed Brooks Orpik for almost as much and for almost as long as the younger, faster, much more offensively talented Matt Niskanen, on the same day, but actually earlier in the day. Like, Niskanen was also available as a UFA when the Caps signed Orpik at 5.5 million right up through age 37. Then once they had Orpik, they called Niskanen and they were like, see.... look how great our defense is.... why not come play here? This is according to published accounts. Niskanen had not won a cup yet. Now that he has, some GMs and coaches will respect him a little bit more. Jay Beagle, without a Cup, with some of the top ten faceoff skills in the league, and with championships in the ECHL and AHL, and coming off of a great playoffs when he had something like five assists and a game winning goal in just two rounds, stayed with the Caps at 6 million over four years. With a Cup, he just made twice that. Why do you think Carolina keeps taking on Chicago's cast-offs? There's an understanding that playoff hockey is a higher pressure situation than regular season hockey and different guys do well at each. Team success comes from individual success and vice versa, and guys who can win in the playoffs are valuable to teams that want to win in the playoffs.

Some teams want Bobrovsky, I'm sure. Chicago is paying a combined nine million to Ward and Crawford this year. One way to control for team success and for situational differences is to ignore power play stats and look at even strength points, and last year Faulk had one more of those than Madison Bowey. You're asking for a first round pick for that difference. If the Caps needed someone they could plug into their power play, they would overpay, but they have Carlson, Niskanen, and Orlov, who all look fine there in limited action. They're really okay.

If Faulk is available for Burakovsky, I think the Caps probably make the trade, but it'll irritate a whole lot of fans who see Burakovsky's points per game, and see how often he's a healthy scratch, and wonder whether, with a new coach on the same team, he could just get back to being the 2nd line wing that he was three years ago. Personally I like that Faulk has some years when he scores some goals, and some years when he puts up a lot of hits. He does seem to be able to change his game a little bit and do different things.

I think when guys are healthy scratches, points per game are relevant, and points per minute are relevant. Burakovsky produced a point every 31 minutes last year in the regular season and a point every 23 minutes last year in the playoffs. http://www.espn.com/nhl/player/_/id/3042044/andre-burakovsky

So he's someone who comes through under pressure and helps teams win.

Again OEL -73. Stralman +60. Who is better? Ya, it’s not even debateable. It’s a terrible stat to compare players from different teams.

Yes if Faulk were availabe for Burky Caps take it. He isn’t. Canes have plenty of wings that can produce as much or more. They asked for Saad from Hawks. Hawks want to send them Anisiov. Canes have not taken them up on it. They are really lookng for a center or a picks.

Faulk has played twice as many games, scored about twice as many points. Burakovsky has a lot more goals per game, and gets a lot more of his offense at even strength in a lot fewer mintues. He gets like, 13 mintues per game, mostly at evens, while Faulk gets like 22 mintues a game. That had changed by the start of the playoffs. Burakovsky got 21 mintues in game one. Then in game two he must have either missed a check or said something about Trotz' mother, because he got two minutes in game two, sat out for the next dozen games, and then came back at less than half as much ice time, to put up six points in ten games, of which the Caps won seven (4-1 in games he got his points). Burakovsky is 3 inches taller, 3 years younger, has had ten or more even strength goals and assists (ten of each) in each of the last three seasons. Faulk has had ten even strength goals once. His even strength assists have declined by about five across each of the last four years, fr 21, to 16, to 11, to 7. What comes next? Early retirement as a 27 year old? A $5M seat in a press box?

No, with Trotz gone, I don't think the Caps trade Burakovsky for Faulk. I think a forward who earned his way up to play 21 minutes in a playoff game is worth more than a defenseman who plays 22. Goals are worth more than assists. Defensemen who get the same points per game as a forward are worth more, but only if they also play defense. Faulk's best plus/minus of the last four seasons was -18. He would fit really well with what they're doing in Chicago, with the scoring a lot of goals, and the giving up even more goals, and the losing all the games, and the rebuilding through the draft.

Washington has placed a premium value on American Olympians, and for a franchise in the US Capital that had traditionally been led by Canadian and Russian players, that's been really neat to see, and I think it's put more seats in the stands. Ted has asked why the NHL need the Olympics, and that's his answer. The Olympics are as big of a sporting event as the Stanley Cup, in America, if not bigger, and they give NHL teams and players a ton of prime time publicity on network television, in an event so culturally engrained that people actually watch it on network television, with their kids.

Last year, halfway through the year, the Caps were dealing with injuries and had former Olympians Orpik and Carlson as their top pair, but Orpik was getting exhausted from all the minutes, and his defense was falling apart, and he slipped past -10 by midseason. AFter that Orpik got much shorter shifts, fewer minutes, and easy zone starts until the playoffs, when he was Orpik again. Can a similar approach work with Faulk? Or is he so used to getting all of the minutes that he'll just be irritated and bitter about it? One thing you look for in athletes is talent. Another is improvement. Faulk showed up really big, early in his career. Then he's been in a funk for four years. Maybe the Caps' coaching staff can help him put himself back together, like Schultz did with the Penguins, but Schultz, after three straight years of getting about 30 points and going -15 or worse, was traded for a 3rd round draft pick.

Andre Burakovsky is worth more than a third round draft pick.

Now, if you want to trade Faulk for Michal Kempny and a 3rd round draft pick, I'd just have to double check the salary cap numbers, and that might be fine.

And if you need a center, I think the Caps are happy to throw in Travis Boyd.