Why would you play Nylander at center over Hertl?

I knw burns is still playing well but its a lot left on the contract and hes not a young guy

I don't think Toronto would be interested in committing $8M to a 34 YO dman for 5.5 more years.

With Meier added, this move is essentially Ceci+Kappy+1st for Burns. A move, which is quite clearly in TOR favor, despite Burns' age.

Meirier and Burns haven't been anything special for the Sharks this year. Think the Leafs lose on ice value this year,,,and certainly are hurt in the future by cap, maybe playing value and the picks.

Meier's contract us utter garbage. Unless he turns into an elite, he's going to be insanely overpaid at 10 mill which is his QO

Lmao didn't know that yeah f*ck it then.

Most of the bridge contracts those guys signed in the summer are nuts. If they don't pan out, these guys can just QO their way to FA and make upwards of 9 million. If they do pan out they'll cost 11+

Yeah I knew that Point and Tkachuk signed both contracts with a large QO coming, but Meier surprised me.

Figured I'd go with the current assessment the coaching staff has of Hertl, that he's 'struggled' this year with the center position responsibilities. I don't agree with that personally but hey they're coaches for a reason, may know better and could be a bunch of reasons and that's just a superficial face-value reason... have some updated lines here in any case.

How often to game-changing defensemen become available outside of the draft? I can think of four times this decade (Subban, Weber, and Karlsson, with two off those instances being a swap!)

Dubas gives up no critical piece and acquires one. He maximizes his team's window for the next 2-3 years.

But, it all depends on if you think the team is good enough now. I don't think they are a legitimate SC contender, but they'd be the team to beat with Burns on the blueline.

Burns is primed to fall off literally any day now. He's already fallen to a 54 point pace, which is great don't get me wrong, and it is only going to get worse the coming years. Acquiring Burns wouldn't maximize the team's window for 2-3 years, it would maximize it for literally half a year.

Also cap space is a critical piece, and for the next 5 years we're going to have a guy falling off a cliff from a #1 to bottom pairing dman making $8M.

So we disagree about Burns's durability. OK, that's fine...but humor me. If it could be guaranteed that Burns would be a Norris-level player until the end of the 2022 season, would you make that trade?

If ifs, ands or buts were candy and nuts, then every day would be Christmas...*looks at calendar*, okay fine you win this one.

Assuming he is in serious contention for the Norris (2015-2017 play) for 3.5 years then yeah I think you'd have to go for that as it'd be hard to say where things will be in 4 years time. All the same by accepting this deal I'm also accepting the fact that we'd have to essentially have a guy who dramatically falls to 3rd pairing lvl making $8M for two years because there's no way we'd be able to afford the multiple firsts/top assets to move that contract.