no no no no take it back,

Give Zadoras mask to us for those picks dawg

Yeah this isn't a good AGM, I'll admit that. I was just playing around with the idea.

The biggest problem is probably the Expansion Draft. Ristolainen isn't much of an upgrade on Cole either, so I'd rather just not make that trade and keep Cole on the 3rd pairing. I'd also rather keep Timmins and the 1st.

At least I tried to make the best of it. But I don't like it. Ristolainen's analytics are also pretty bad even if one bends the truth and statistics a bit.

Josh Anderson is a nobody ( he is NOT the Josh Anderson from CBJ) and Jost is a 2nd 3rd liner so this trade is a rip off for Buffalo

NJ don't have a 2nd or 3rd round pick this offseason and I'd rather trade him to a team that does have a 2020 2nd.

As an alternative, would you be open to considering swapping VAN 2020 1st and COL 2020 1st, depending on where the Vancouver 1st ends up. Say for example, #20 for #29 + 2021 2nd/prospect?

Shhhh, don't tell anyone about our secret agent Josh Anderson

I based this trade on a Buffalo fans proposal. It isn't good value for Buffalo, but I still wouldn't do it for Colorado either. Not a good fit.

Lmao ok 😂😂😂😂🤣🤣

The plan is to sneak him into a trade with Columbus for (their) Josh Anderson to troll and confuse Columbus fans

Imagine Gary Bettman at the draft.........

Bettman: "We have another trade to announce..."
*crowd gets excited.... and listen intently*
Bettman: The Columbus Blue Jackets trade Josh Anderson to the Colorado Avalanche trade Tyson Jost and... Josh Anderson"
*camera pans in on confused fans.... scrambling through their phones to try to understand what just happened*

I don't understand why people keep signing Graves for under 3M a season. He's clearly better than Dermott and he has arbitration rights. That would be like signing Dermott for under 2M for 3 years.

Dermott: 157 games played (171 if you include playoffs)
Graves:.... 95 games played

Graves' games are also split across two seasons (26 games + 69 games), with no playoff games yet.

I think he's a very good player so don't get me wrong here, but the fact is that when it comes to contract talks he simply doesn't have a big sample size for arbitrators to go off of. Nor does he have draft pedigree or other intangibles.

Also worth noting that Graves also loves it in Colorado, where he gets to play top line minutes on a contender with a legit superstar. That being the case I would be shocked if he takes the team to arbitration and risks getting traded away.

And let's not pretend like $2.75m x 3 years isn't a lot of money... That's $8.25 million dollars, and would set the guy up for life. That's a pretty good deal considering that 12 months ago he wasn't even sure if he'd play in the NHL again.

No way a top 4 defender should be getting that little. I think he gets 3.5M.

If sample size is the problem he takes a 2.5M one year deal but then he's no longer an RFA and you have to pay more for his next contract ~4M.

no idea who COL Josh Anderson is (sounds like a nobody from the comments) but Jost + 2nd for Risto is a fair offer. It's not exciting to me as a BUF fan, but at this point, I'm not sure we could do much better than that, so I'd be tempted to accept. The $1 mil retained is a nice touch, but can't see why COL would agree to it. Even if they can afford it, they'd have all the leverage in trade talks for Risto.

Do you mean BUF (the part in bold)?

Without the retention I'd drop the offer down to Jost + 3rd.

Yes, I got mixed up reading the trade, my bad.

BUF probably wouldn't agree to retain $...Worse cap problems than it may seem b/c of all the RFA's/players coming off of their ELC that need to be signed. (Reinhart, Olofsson, Kahun, Montour, and Ullmark this year, Dahlin & Joker are off their ELC's after next year)

Seeing as COL looks pretty certain to be picking in the bottom 1/3rd of the upcoming draft, I think Jost + 2nd for Risto (no salary retained) is more likely.

And I actually think COL would be one of the best landing spots and fits for Risto, fwiw.

Fair enough on the capspace, you probably need to be careful with that.

The biggest issue with acquiring Ristolainen is the ED. Acquiring him probably means that we have to expose either him or Graves in the ED, and that makes paying Jost + 2nd/3rd for him not worth the hassle. We might as well just stick it out with Cole and ensure that we can keep Graves AND the assets (i.e. Jost + 2nd/3rd). If Ristolainen was a significant upgrade on Cole and Graves then it would be fine, but he's not really.

It would also be more fitting for us to acquire a RHD with just 1 year remaining on his contract, as a Dman with term beyond 2021 just makes it harder to resign Makar/Landeskog/Grubauer. We're also going to want to introduce Timmins soon too, and in that light a RHD with 2+ years term would block Timmins.

Makes sense. Risto's 5.4 cap hit in 2021 wont be ideal when COL is trying to sign Landeskog + Makar + Grubauer

Tough to find a fit for a 25 yr old D making 5.4 mil thru 2022 that is ideally suited to play sheltered 2nd/3rd line D assignments & PP2

Depending on how UFA goes for them, Calgary might be the best fit.

Other teams that could be interested if the price is right and they strike out in UFA are Toronto, Anaheim, Winnipeg, LA, Vancouver, Minnesota, or Detroit.

In general this won't be a great offseason to trade RHD's, as there will be plenty of them available in free agency, along with the flat cap which will make it hard to move big contracts.