Edited Feb. 7, 2020 at 2:01 p.m.
Quoting: Caniac2000
Tatar was a throw in for Cap reasons, let's be frank. We all understand that he was just moved to allow Vegas to have the full cap hit of Patches. There are guys with TT and Aho level analytics, and there was this year, but Arizona acquired him. There's possibly someone like Kase if they overpay too
I strongly disagree with both of those points.
Obviously without Tatar going the other way the cap doesn't work, but you can tell that Montreal valued him highly because they got very little other stuff in that trade. If he was just a cap dump on Montreal, Montreal would have asked for more valuable assets than Nick Suzuki and the 60th overall pick for a perennial 30 goal scorer and their captain. More likely, Montreal wanted Tatar to be a minor but much cheaper downgrade on the ice immediately (which he has been, because he's good), and got back a few low impact futures to make up the difference in value, with due respect to Nick Suzuki.
In addition, Tatar is outperforming Taylor Hall in every meaningful advanced stat this year, Tatar lines up much closer with your guys than Hall. I'm certainly not saying Hall is bad or anything, but if "similar analytics to Teravianen and Aho" is your biggest criteria, Tatar is still the guy you should want even if Hall was available, and he'll be cheaper to get than what Arizona gave to New Jersey. Kase is very good too, his analytics line up well like you like, but that's definitely a more future minded move, considering his underlying numbers haven't yet translated into on-ice production (so he might not help you for this playoff push) and his RFA status/current cap hit with term gives Anaheim tons of leverage to demand a higher price. I'd still go for Tatar over those guys unless you could get Kase for just the right price, which as you note seems unlikely.