Needless to say, I like this. A lot.

Why would Arizona trade Hammer?

Maybe for Goli... Hammer is ARZ's best RHD...

Except he's left handed.

$8.5 million in cap relief. They're already solid defensively and need to improve at offense.

Sorry, right side playing D man

Arizona is going to have to make some tough decisions this summer if they want to be competitive next year. Their defense is pretty solid, but they can't score. Goligoski is their puck mover and their point getter. Seems to me that trading him would only exacerbate their problem. Hjalmarsson, on the other hand, has 1 goal in his last 100+ games. With Lyubushkin coming in from the KHL and playing well, Hjalmarsson is expendable.

The Kings need a quality defense-first guy to allow Doughty to focus more on offense. He hasn't really had a quality defensive stalwart on his pairing since Mitchell and Scuderi left. Putting someone like Hjalmarsson on his line would help him get his game back to the elite level we're all used to. If the Kings were to target Goligoski instead, Doughty would need to continue to be the defensively responsible one of the pair.

Just because he can't score doesn't mean he's bad. His whole game is blocking shots and being a defensive defenseman

Your Doughty argument also applies to ARZ, Goli (or OEL) is allowed to play far more offensively when paired with him... Trading Goli means you don't have to staple a DFD to him so you can play Hammer with someone else and allow them to play far more offensively (and they'd likely be far more effective than Goli...) Also just the fact that Hammer is far better than Goli and worth way more than a third make Goli way more likely to be moved imo

I never said he was bad. I certainly don't think that at all, otherwise I wouldn't be trading for him. However, there's not a lot of teams out there that can absorb $8.5 million that would not automatically be on a player's NTC/NMC trade list. LA is one of those prime destinations that is attractive to most players. The same can't be said for Ottawa.

As I said, Goligoski doesn't really serve the Kings purposes, so I don't think they'd be willing to take on his contract unless Arizona retains, which sort of defeats the purpose of them making this trade to begin with. If they can move Goligoski and Grabner elsewhere without having to give up assets, retain salary, or take back salary in return, then they could look into that as well.

Yeah, I'd MUCH rather pay (as long as it's not an insane amount) to move Goli than trade Hammer for scraps

I'm curious to see if there will be any takers for that who aren't on his 8-team no-trade list.