Chicago doesn't even entertain that offer.

Right. Because Kane, Keith, and Seabrook don't have enough Cup rings to lead a rebuild, Anisimov has never played 1C on a rebuilding club before, and cap space and draft picks aren't as valuable as a guy having a rebound year after being widely considered the worst contract in hockey. You actually misspelled Washington.

Dude you're delusional. You definitely seem ignorant to Chicago's cap situation because the only bad contract we have is Seabrook's. Connolly and Dowd don't even crack the top 6 in Chicago so why would we give up a first line (great two-way) center for two bottom 6 guys and late picks? Makes no sense at all.

Caps have lost six straight games. I might have just offered you Jack Hughes, if they don't turn it around. Their pick would currently be 21st overall.

Toews has a point a game, at thirty, after a few years of.... not that. He's got eight points in five games on a team that otherwise doesn't win many. Keep him and he can play your own pick way out of the top five, maybe even out of the top ten?

Connolly's a 26 year old former sixth overall pick whose 9 goals and 25 points this year would be tied for fifth and in sole possession of fifth among Hawks forwards right now, before you trade Toews. Is six more than four or five? I forget. We don't have math in DC. But I still think, somehow, if Connolly has 25 points in half a season this year, he might just get to fifty some year, soon, for a lot less money than Toews has gotten you fifty in each of the last three years. Connolly also plays tougher zone starts than Toews, year in and year out. He's a good two way player, too.

Dowd has converted his game from lukewarm offense to become a good #4C. He's decent at faceoffs, penalty killing, and breakouts, and he's a sneaky playmaker when teams leave him open. Reminds me a little of Jay Beagle, but not quite the same level. But the Caps have two other decent #4 centers in Boyd and Stephenson, so trading the third to get a #2C makes sense on the ice.

But what I've done to the Caps' salary cap situation for next year is abominable. They'd have to trade Holtby and Burakovsky for almost nothing, just to re-sign Vrana. So, literally, truly, the Caps would not do this trade, as it stands. It was posted as a joke. Could Toews help them this year? Sure looks like it. But then the next four years, if he goes back to scoring 50 points for $10M, or keeps declining, that would hurt.

For it to really work, there has to be a three way deal with a different first pick and a prospect coming back for Holtby. Then the Caps would happily add Burakovsky to get a little salary retention.

He has posted some excessively homer-istic trades before buy Connolly, Dowd, 30ish, 60ish, 90is and 120ish for Toews takes that cake!!! I thought that waiver wire Jaskin and D-level prospect Lewington for Sutter with 3 years of $2M retention was going to take the cake. But then a "pile of blah" was offered for Toews. Then DEFENDED in a serious manner.

He posted last week that no matter what he posts people say it isn't enough. You would think that over time that would sink in and the AGMs would get better. But no. Instead we get "justification" as to why dime-a-dozen-Dowd and UFA Brett Connolly is good enough to net Towes. It is literally troll level AGMs, but he thinks that they are actually fair value. It's not like that moron that posts the idiotic Pittsburgh AGMs with 50 draft picks traded and such, pure willing troll. Here he actually looks at these and thinks, "Yep, that's fair!" and is serious.

And yes, this IS as constructive as the criticism can get because the trade suggestions are so completely insane and far off value. There is no basis in reality.

1) The caps first round pick this year will not be first overall, no way that ever happens.

2) Yes, Toews has been on fire this year. Actually, he's back to the way he was before the 2015 season, so he really only had two down years which it's been speculated that he was dealing with back issues. The Hawks are clearly trying to do a hybrid rebuild and have already been reported to going all in on Panarin in the offseason, thus signaling a shot at competing in the playoffs next year.

3) Connolly is just not the piece you get back for a captain like Jonathan Toews. You can say he'd be 5th in points upon joining the Hawks but that's joining a very bad Hawks team where everyone but Toews, Kane, and DeBrincat are doing very little to contribute. Your point about tougher zone starts is just preposterous as Toews is the best defensive center and face-off guy on the team so he takes tough zone starts and plays against the opponent's best line night in and night out.

4) We don't need another 4th line center, we have Kruger and Kampf.

5) Caps don't need Toews, but I'm sure the Hawks would listen on Anisimov with retained salary.

6) For it to really work we'd need a top 6 center potential player coming back, along with other picks or prospects. It just isn't happening.

I mean.... if the Hawks don't trade Toews, who has eight points in five games, they're not getting a shot at Hughes. If they do, what other team is focused so much on this year or next year that it makes any offer at all on Toews, with five years at a 10M cap hit? Name one?

Dumping Toews got basically random pieces like you suggested above just to get a couple % points more chance to get Hughes would be excessively moronic and that GM and entire staff should be fired immediately.

No one needs to name any other Toews trade suitors because there is no actual reason for Chicago to trade Toews. Especially for a bottom 6 guy, a 30ish pick and junk.

Why don't you have the Caps trade Ovechkin for a 3rd liner and a 30ish pick and some junk so that the Caps get a better shot at getting Hughes?

Didn't think so. The Caps' pick is looking like 21st. The Hawks' pick is looking like 5th, but with 8 points in 5 games, their star center is playing like he wants to win now. Since you can't name any other team that would want him, go ahead and let me know what you think the Caps should offer, starting with Ovechkin, Backstrom, Kuznetsov, and a promise to never fight with Sidney Crosby again, but just give him lots of hugs, and free drinks. Okay? Thanks. Next.

Wow. On cue.

I don't think that the Caps should get Toews. The Caps have 2 #1C's already. But a trade for Toews would START with Kuznetsov or Backstrom going the other way. Not start with Connolly.

Remember the other day when you questioned why EVERYONE always says that you need to add more to your trades? Really, REALLY, think about that.

So then you are admitting that your AGMs are literally troll posts trying to invoke such responses?

Are you not old enough to have watched the Penguins rebuild? Because when they drafted Crosby, they didn't keep Jagr and Francis on the ice through losing seasons. They didn't give Kevin Stevens a ten year contract for an endless victory lap. They focused on their team's future and tried out #1 center options as illustrious as Kris Beech. They were bad, but they were young and hungry and trying to improve, and some people watched, and some people cheered for them, and then they drafted Malkin and Crosby, and they started adding back some of the old guys like Recchi who had been with with them before.

I think a team that rents Toews now while he's hot ends up saving the Hawks $40M in cap space over the next four years, and about $36M in cash, starting with almost half of this season's $12M payday to captain the team to 26th overall. Do you think Toews, who turns 31 in April, and is signed through his 35th birthday, is going to score 80 points a year? Do most middle aged guys with back problems tend to get healthier and stronger, the older we get? You are a very good troll. Very effective at getting responses. I am going to stop responding.

Holy cow this might be the worst one yet

Hard to believe that he could top himself, but he managed to do it.

I like in his defense of the the move he takes shots at how overpriced and bad Toews is and is going to get and how Chicago wouldn't want to pay Toews for that and so they want to move him... yet he still trades for Toews at full hit. He literally doesn't see what he is saying. Sometimes I wonder how many voices are in that head.

No, they had the losing seasons because the star players all left because Pittsburgh had no money and let good UFAs walk and traded any high $ contract. They fielded a team led by the likes of Alex Morozov and Milan Kraft. Are you old enough to know what "bankruptcy" is?

I am not sure where this comparison of this trade and the Pens comes into it, other than your tendency to change the topic when you reply.

Ovechkin is signed through 35
Carlson is signed through 36

Chicago counters with Saad, Kruger, lottery protected 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th for Ovechkin and Carlson. Afterall, signed until they are 35 or older and blah blah blah, whatever you rambled about 35 year old guys above.

Those were literally the kind of offers all over this board after Ovechkin had a "weak" year with "just" 34 goals, two years ago, as he played set-up guy to get Oshie to his first 30 goal season at about 30 years old. At the time, Toews was having worse offensive totals, and I tried lowballing Chicago for him back then, too, with similar disbelief all over this board. I think Toews is still good, but his contract is potentially very bad.



Morozov was pretty good. Koltsov, maybe not as much. Had that one hot streak that almost cost the Pens Crosby and Malkin, and they dropped him for it, as the Hawks probably should drop Toews, if they're committed to rebuilding through the draft, which they should because I don't think they're a contender this year. When you can't win in sports that have a draft order opposite to season results, you have to give up some good players, and get back future assets, if you want to win in the future. Hawks fans claiming Toews' back is now permanently better and he will play like an Olympic hero until 35 are being sentimental. Most fixes we have for recurring pain are temporary, with diminishing returns. Toews is good again, now. Maybe he'll be good again, one or two more times, in the future. Or maybe not.

The question for Chicago's management is whether fans will still buy sentimental tickets to watch a 26th place team until Toews is 35.

It's not a rhetorical question. I see kids young enough that they were born after the Hawks' last championship who wear Toews jerseys hours away from Illinois. Maybe marketing nostalgia is the safer bet.

But it sounds like the Hawks' plans for next year center on re-signing Panarin, who played well with Kane and Anisimov. How much better of a 2C is Toews than, say, Duchene at the same cap hit, without the back problems, a few years younger? Unless the answer is "a first, second, third, and fourth round pick better, plus a scrub like Brett Connolly," then I'm offering them a fair hockey trade.



Brian MacLellan literally had a press conference to announce that he is building to try to win another championship during Backstrom's current contract, which is up in the summer of 2020, and not worrying as much about what happens after that, other than hopefully re-signing Backstrom.

I absolutely think the last couple years of Toews' contract will hurt whatever team has him. Glad his back is doing better and allowing him to play more like himself this year, but middle aged guys with recurring back problems don't tend to stay healthy forever. He's great right now, when the Hawks were, just weeks ago, drooling over a possible 2nd overall draft pick, and the Caps, just last week, announced they would make moves that look bad, long term, in order to win right away.

If I ran the hawks as a sports team, I would jump on that trade.

If I ran them as a Hallmark movie, Toews would never leave, and he would get contract extensions until he literally could not lace up his skates.

Each could be very profitable. Both sell plenty of advertisements.

Their call.

I think there were about thirty offers for Ovechkin on here that centered on Galwo,chenyuk and a pick or t after his 34 goal season. Not always a first rounder. Hockey players get old and lose value.

Jagr was traded for Kris Beech, whom the Caps got back two years later on waivers, plus a couple of other busts.

Francis was traded for John Cullen.

I hear what you're saying about the Penguins being a small market team and feeling more economic pressure to win every year, but the Kings traded Gretzky when he slowed down a bit, no? Or just let him walk as a UFA, to STL?

Towes for a year's worth of late-round draft picks and 10M of cap space could be a good hockey trade.

Then...



Fail.

You are acting like these deals are comparable to what you put above.

But Jagr was not traded for whatever reason you think that Chicago is going to GIVE Toews to Washington over. Pittsburgh was operating DEEP in the red. It's not that they had no money, they were in deficit. There was literally ZERO choice about moving Jagr, and there were only two suitors, Rangers and Caps. Why weren't their more suitors? Because Jagr was a head case and even with his abilities no one wanted any part of him. He was a cancer. The Caps offer stunk and the Rangers was worse. Jagr would have been traded for a 7th if that was the best offer. Ironically, in the long run, even though no one going to the Pens worked out at all, it was the Caps that lost the Jagr trade.

Francis was traded out of Hartford because ownership wanted him gone. Ownership told the GM that if Francis was on the team come the deadline the entire management team would be fired. Francis, Samuelsson and Jennings were traded for Cullen, Zalapski and Parker. Zalapski was a very young very good offensive D. Cullen was coming off of a 90+ point season and at the time of the trade had 94 points in 65 games (without Lemieux). Francis was forced out of Hartford and he still garnished high end players in return. It's funny that you said "Francis was traded for John Cullen" like it was a joke. It shows how little you actually know.

I didn't say anything about I hear what you're saying about the Penguins being a small market team and feeling more economic pressure to win every year. Reading comprehension failure. I said that they were bankrupt. They didn't trade Jagr in an attempt to to win. They traded him to keep the team from literally folding.

"but the Kings traded Gretzky when he slowed down a bit, no?" No. They traded him when his contract was up, not when he had any term left. They moved him as a rental the way many many teams do with UFAs that are coming to the end of a contract. Once again you show your limited knowledge about the business of hockey, contracts and trades.

Hey, good point.