Quoting: A_K
1. We'd get the best player at the best position in the deal, possibly the best two when you look at the upside of Cozens... And Cozens is easily a top-5 prospect outside the NHL...
2. We'd save cap, long- and short-term
3. We'd be more competitive long- and short-term
4. We'd pick in the top-10 for the first time since we landed Pietrangelo
5. Even if Thomas ends up better than Cozens we still win this by a mile
how often can you grab a top 10 NHL center, age 23, with 6 years on his deal, in a trade?
1- That's great, but we're not a team trying to build around one main superstar. We try to have quality up and down the lines, and that's how I prefer it. As for Cozens, dude, you're overselling him. He's a great prospect, but nobody has him rated top 5 outside the NHL right now. Top 10 maybe. And his upside is no greater than that of Thomas, who has already left "prospect" behind to be a bona fide Stanley Cup contributor.
2- Short term, this deal saves us all of $125K. So not even worth mentioning. Long term is a bit nebulous, as some of those players will re-sign at higher numbers and so on, but we'd be sending $62,5M of commitment and taking back about $68.5M. So I'm not sure how you figured it saved us long term money.
3- Short term is very debatable, as we'd give two prime regulars for one. Long term is, again, hard to pinpoint either way one sees it. It's certainly no slam dunk that the trade improves our longer Cup outlook.
4- Sure, yeah. Cool. And a good year to do it, no doubt. But I'm not taking away from a current Cup window to get it. Maybe that's just me. Current Cup window comes before all.
And yeah, I'd love to have Eichel. And I haven't actually said I would reject this. Just that it's quite debatable. And that I'd certainly be more interested if Thomas wasn't involved.