Graves had a solid year, I'll give you that, but who's to say he can replicate that? We've seen it many times where players have had breakout years only to seriously regress and never reach the level again. There's a lot of risk acquiring Graves right now.

Just because Jost is 22 doesn't mean he's a good piece for the future. He's now just finished his 3rd season and his career high in points is 26 points.

The first round pick is great and obviously that's the main piece so there's nothing I can say about that.


We are trading Domi who is a young consistent 50 point player with the potential of being a 70 pt guy.

Lehkonen is a young consistent 30 PT winger that plays defense first and will eat up PK minutes.

Then it's the two seconds which could either be anything or nothing.


We are getting worse in the immediate future (they are also going to be NHL players in 10 years) while getting little to no return that will guarantee us future success.

In general I think you've made a good point about players with 1 year experience potentially regressing.

That said, in most such cases there are red flags during their 'good' year that suggest that a regression is coming. For example, they may have played more than they otherwise would have due to injuries to others, or shot at an unsustainable shot %, or rocked a high PDO, etc.

In Graves case, there isn't really a SINGLE red flag to suggest that he's due to regress. He's been as steady as they come, not just this season, but also going back to his 26 game stint in 2018/19 (which was the reason why we felt comfortable letting Nemeth go to UFA btw). Graves also didn't score in patches, but his offense was consistent throughout the year, and the fact that he led the league in +/- is also testament to his consistency on defense.

Needless to say, there really isn't any reason to expect a regression. Apart from any possible change that might happen as a result of changing team, but that isn't really isolated to him alone, but is a factor for any player that gets moved regardless of where they get moved to.

As for your last comment, do you really think you're ever going to get a player in return for Domi that is going to "guarantee" future success? I mean, not even Domi himself can "guarantee" future success...

Like I said, Domi is a consistent 50 PT player. His future success is minimum 50 PT's until he starts regressing. We are trading players who have proven they are quality NHL players for a player like Graves who had a career year and a player like Jost who hasn't shown any promise since coming to the NHL.