Edmonton says no thanks. we've got enough crappy contracts and aren't in a position to take more plus that 8th pick can become more valuable than initially thought with all of the uncertainty of where players will be picked

If people want TBL first, they're gonna have to take a worse contract than Callahan's one year.

Helm for 1.9m is in no way a bad contract. He is a great pk, 4th line speed guy still. And bowey is a young offensive dman that could still turn into something more than the 3rd pairing he is now.

All in all you improve with both guys and save 5 mil.

Plus Holland clearly values Helm, as he signed him to the original deal

That would be why I included a 3rd round pick and a young pk, speedy 4th line forward.

Why would tampa do that? They will package Callahan and Miller, and/or an ELC to shred salary, not move a 1st.

I think they would do it because moving Miller just to get rid of callahan hurts then now. They are in win now mode. If they can get rid of callahan without hurting the team as it is now they should.

nearly 2mil for 2yrs of a 4th line player is alot especially when he is aging and doesn't really bring much to today's NHL . 4th liners should be around the 1mil mark. Plus the cap dumps aren't worth giving up the #8 pick. If they give up that pick its for immediate help not to sweeten a cap dump. Holland is a firm believer of holding onto picks so even if he would value Helm it would have to take a damn good return for him to budge from the #8 pick

Because the salary cap is rumored to be coming in at 81.5-82M source and source 2 both well respected NHL insiders saying the same thing. Which means Tampa has 5.38M left to sign Point and at least 3 other players. Even accounting for Callahan's 5.8M that not possible. Other teams know this and won't be doing them any favors. They will simply wait them out until Tampa has to put players on waivers for the purposes of either buying them out or burying them in the minors.

So Detroit retains half on Helm, Gets Edmonton's #8 pick yet takes on Milan Lucic horrendous full 4 x 6 contract. Yeah that's not happening. Would rather keep Helm and Bowey then that garbage Lucic contract even if the #8 pick is involved very bad for Detroit. And we need to give big contracts to Mantha, AA and Bertuzzi next summer as well don't need Lucic's $6 million salary on the books.

With lucic in the line up we will still have 30 mil to a extend and sign players.

Say mantha gets 7, AA gets 6.5 and Bert gets 4.5, that's 10 mil more than they make now. So 20 mil to round out the D core and other signings.

Also we could easily flip lucic as a cap dump on the last year of his deal if we need the money by then