Quoting: Seaver28
Edler on last year of contract. It's a cap dump.
Carter, that's a tough one. He's just older and had a few more years on contract without trade restrictions.
There's no reason to hold onto Kovi. My guess is he requests a trade by Feb. He went to LA to win, not be dead last.
Forgot is garbage. Save some $ and play Brickley or Clague. They need the experience.
Dzingle is young, fast and scores. Alec is worth, at BEST, a 3rd. Campbell is good bait and Wagner is 4th liner.
The Panarin trade - yes, it's assumed he signs with LA. But getting him for free in the summer can't happen because it'll be a bidding war ang they need to clear space to play him.
Cam is garbage, true. But he's a good, cheaper mentor for Peterson. Quick is always hurt. Philly needs goaltending more than Laughton.
Right, no 1sts gained, but none lost.
Kovalchuk chose LA partly to win, but also because his wife is a well-known singer in Russia and wants to be around the music industry in LA. His kids were all unborn or toddlers when he left New Jersey for Russia, but they're all in school now, and would have to be uprooted from their schools, friends, and new lives if he got traded. I don't think he waives his NMC, even if the Kings suck.
Forbort is not garbage. Forbort is unexciting, but he's a solid positional defenseman. He's arguably overused as a first pairing defenseman alongside Doughty, but his contract is very reasonable. Play him on the third pairing with Phaneuf and on the first PK unit and he's fine. At this point of their careers, Brickley and Clague are not NHL defensemen. Next season, if he makes the necessary improvements to his game, you can play Clague with Doughty. One of Martinez or Muzzin will likely be traded as well for scoring help, so that will make room for LaDue in the lineup. My guess is that Walker makes the team and Brickley goes elsewhere. Brickley has NOT looked good in Ontario this season and has fallen down the depth chart.
Martinez is worth well more than you think, certainly more than a 3rd round pick, and he has a very reasonable $4M contract for a couple more years. Package him up with someone like Toffoli and you could even get a quality top line winger. Absolutely something better than Dzingel, a player that will be a UFA at the end of this season.
For Panarin, you're essentially trading Kovalchuk, Toffoli, Muzzin, and two draft picks, the better of which will almost be a first round pick due to the Kings being in the standings cellar (mid 30s overall). That's insane. If the Kings were to blow up the team like this, they wouldn't be trading for Panarin anyway since they're going to suck for several years and Panarin wouldn't want to resign with a team that's going to be a lottery team for the next several years.
The Kings aren't going to trade away their franchise goaltender that won them two Stanley Cups and will one day have a statue outside Staples Center just so they can upgrade their 2019 draft pick from ~65th overall to ~45th overall. They already brought in Budaj to be a mentor to Petersen. If anything, they'll keep Quick as bait for the new Seattle franchise so they're less likely to lose a young defensive prospect in the expansion draft.
You either need to decide whether the Kings are re-tooling on the fly to help the team win now, or rebuilding to make the team better later. If they're doing the former, they're not going to trade out all of their assets for such a lackluster return. If they're doing the latter, they're going to trade for quality prospects and high round draft picks, not players already in or past their primes like Panarin, Dzingel, Bjugstad, and Edler. The lineup you put together is significantly worse than the team that LA currently ices every game. If that's the idea, then fine, but why not get some 1st round picks and young prospects instead so that the team will be in a significantly better situation in 5 years or so?
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