NTC...

Bolts and TJ both decline.

Has absolutely nothing to do with TB laughing at the offer...

I see the nut jobs that think ristolainen is alzner are out.

Fun fact. Tampa outscored the sabres by over a goal a game (99 more goals) and Johnson, who is a center, had 4 more points than ristolainen, who is a defenseman.

Risto value is low right now and he needs a change of scenery, but the idiocy about him on this site is out of control

I used to think the same as you but when I saw the numbers he’s is bad. He’s nothing more than a PP QB. Most of his points were on the PP and his defensive metrics are atrocious.

He has had a tough time being the #1 defensemen on awful teams. I think a change of scenery will do him (and buffalo) wonders

Ristolainen’s defensive stats suggest that the team was worse with him on the ice than off of it in all non power play scenarios. That’s partly because he usually played against the best scorers, but the same stats aren’t that bad for other okay defensemen on bad teams.

He’s not terrible, but he’s an offensive specialist. That’s not with what Hedman needs to be paired (he needs a fast, defensive player with a little bit of an offensive edge, which describes Sergachev a lot more than Ristolainen), while Sergachev and Hedman looked like they complement each other well when he finally got his chance (over limited minutes because Hedman got injured), and the McDonagh-Cernak pairing works very well. He’d be a third-pairing defenseman over Shattenkirk, and considering Shattenkirk is a great defenseman for the third-pairing, a $5.4m cap hit with term would be awful for us. The main justification for these trades is the completely false narrative that our defense is too small and not physical. Every defenseman except Shattenkirk is over 200 pounds (and Shattenkirk is close), Cernak thrives on physicality, and McDonagh and Hedman have both been top defensemen on SCF teams. Giving up a legitimate top-six winger to add an expensive defenseman for his size would be insane for our roster, and we score and defend well enough to make it utterly useless.

I know the whole narrative about choking or whatever, but the fact is that series was lost almost entirely because of Vasilevskiy. Advanced stats suggest that we were the best defensive team in the first round when we were eliminated and one of the top few offensively before we lost Kucherov for a game. We looked outplayed game two, but we absolutely outplayed the Blue Jackets 2-3 out of four games. If Vasilevskiy hadn’t put up the worst performance of any goalie in the playoffs, the Blue Jackets would have never gained momentum and Kucherov would have never gotten angry and made a stupid move to get himself suspended and that series would be over in 5-6 games in our favor, easily. So we’re taking a good playoff team that got unlucky and adding a healthy Hedman next year. Vasilevskiy won the Vezina trophy, and while I don’t understand why BriseBois got no discount after he cost us a Cup run, it’s pretty reasonable to expect him to look serviceable for a few games (or, at the very least, to not have an injured backup). Adding a power forward is one thing, because we should have scored more and lacked offensive grit. But we don’t have the cap space for Ristolainen, don’t have a spot for him, and don’t have any desire for his skillset. Any trade for him is nothing more than stupidity.