So basically montour, Rienhart and four unprotected firsts for marner? Think that works.

Why does every Sabres fan on this forum seem to want to trade Ristolainen? Did he have an off year last year or something?
Also, as a Leafs fan, you gotta offer Marner at least 11.5 for us to let you have him. If you put right at 11, we're matching you LOL. Also I think the Oilers would want an extra mid round pick, like a 3rd or a 4th in that deal for Nuges but yeah just my 2 cents

Bro you keep Reinhart in this scenario xD Nuges and Marner would be on your second line lmao holy. Thank god the Leafs would never let him walk at 11. If you guys offer 11.5 AAV, we'll let you have him

Not when you can’t afford them next year and Toronto signs them lol.

That $500k is really that important to you huh, lol.

Never would Oilers trade Nuge for Ristolainen, Buffalo fans think is is a crappy DEFENSE MAN too!!!!!!!!!!

over 10 years it does

likely 4 of Dahlin, Nylander, Middlestadt, Reinhardt, Montour wouldn't have room to re-sign if you did this.

500k is the difference between Tavares money and Matthews money lol .... Marner wants matthews money.

Oh boy, here we go:

Every year is basically an off year for Ristolainen.

I think after a) watching an actual good defenseman on that blueline, most fans have realized Risto’s ability to implode with the puck on his stick and basically everywhere is his own zone is more desirable elsewhere. And that b) after a great trade for Miller and a probable slight overpay for Montour the team is ready to recoup some much needed talent elsewhere, as perception around the league seems to be that Risto’ and his nothing but counting stats could be desired elsewhere

Ahhh makes sense, I haven't kept up much with the Sabres except that their defense was getting markedly better through acquisitions that I'd have really liked on the Leafs like Bogosian and Montour. I suppose I just assumed Ristolainen would've just continued to get better while all of this was happening

I mean people still think he’s good, so there’s that. Bogosian also “looked good” this year when in reality he was just attached to Dahlin most of the time. I don’t know man, I wouldn’t look to the Sabres to figure out my D. But then again I wouldn’t look to Cody Ceci either.

I will say I’m actually a Bruins fan, I just have some widely spread interests around the league.

The NHL needs to change the playoff format, I'm tired of losing to Boston in the first round LMAO. Ceci wasn't really to fix our defense, he's gonna play bottom pairing minutes, we just needed to get out of Zaitsev's contract for the next half decade.

Well it’s more or less coin flips all the way. Even the in theory most one-sided matchup this year went 0-4 in CBJ’s favor, I wouldn’t get hung up on losing game 7 round 1 much more than game 7 of the SCF.

Oh yeah, I think trading Zaitsev was great. It’s just I would literally have let Ceci walk. Playing decent LHD on the right side is the next market inefficiency good teams will abuse - you heard it here first!

Yeah but I'm not gonna lie, I don't know if I'd prefer Ceci on his natural side, or GARDINER on his off hand xD. Cause those were the only two real options for our d-core. Plus Ceci is playing third pairing minutes, so I'm hoping his terrible stats was because he's a 4th or 5th defensemen on a good team being forced to be the #1 or #2 defenseman on a bad one. But then again, it doesn't look too promising :/ It's not like we could've gotten someone insane with that extra cap tho, so I'm ok with him being our 6th defenseman for just this year

^ When you don't look at the long-term outlook section of AGM. $25M in cap space next year in this scenario (without a cap increase btw)

When you don’t notice your long term outlook only has 12 players and 11 rfa’s.... we could always pump the price up and put the financial squeeze on buffalo and then go after Dahlin later though.

I don’t see buffalo doing something this dumb though. With the crazy competition in division and the strength of the eastern conference in general is it wise to give up 4 unprotected firsts?

I don't see anything like this realistically occurring IRL either, but it is feasible financially. There's more than enough room to sign the RFA's worth retaining and Dahlin in the future. Reinhart and Mountour would get the biggest deals. Outside of that your're looking at bridge deals for Mittelstadt, Olofsson, Thompson, and Pilut. (That's if you even want to keep them). TOR isn't gonna offersheet those guys way above their market value just to retaliate anyway. At least I don't see it.

No one should be worried about losing the 4 first round picks at all. That's the thing with the high priced RFAs. If you gave up 4 firsts for Aho, Marner, Point, etc you should not loose an ounce of sleep. You would be extremely lucky to get even 1 player the caliber of those guys with those 4 picks. Teams like the Penguins haven't made a first round pick in years. They keep trading them away for Rentals and they're doing alright last time I checked.. Why not trade them for a guaranteed elite player entering his prime?

Oh there will be no bridge deals for buffalo... lol. Like I said earlier overpaying a player and giving up four firsts would be crippling. Good point about Pittsburgh, leafs don’t have a ton of use for drafingbin the 1st either. They would use them as trade assets. If buffalo manages to make it to the playoffs what are they going to use?