Joined: Jul. 2021
Posts: 1,038
Likes: 541
I just stumbled upon this trade, of which I had no recollection from when it happened leading up to the 2020 deadline. I guess that’s a testament to how insignificant it seemed at the time. Of course it looks crazy now, but I suspected it looked like a clear Toronto win at the time, as the comments in this forum confirm.
I’m not going to speculate on whether they should have known better – hindsight is 20/20 – but what strikes me is the number of other teams’ castoffs Florida has taken and turned into solid NHL players – not just depth players, but guys who can play on the top two lines. Others include Anthony Duclair, Carter Verhaeghe, Gustav Forsling, Chris Driedger and Sam Bennett, and to a lesser extent, Eetu Luostarinen and Ryan Lomberg. I think they owe a lot of their success to that, because these guys tend to be on team-friendly contracts, at least at first. How do they do it?