Former Hockey Fan
Joined: Jun. 2017
Posts: 13,144
Likes: 10,516
As for all of the Byron/Kulak stuff:
I think that Byron should absolutely be on our normal lineup. If everyone’s ok with it and you want to send him to the taxi-squad on off-days as a paper transaction to save cap space, go ahead. However that might pose a few issues with waivers or Byron’s mental state, so this might not work.
As for trading Kulak, I think we need to do it. We need to make sure that we are not only cap compliant this year, but next year as well, when we need cap space more. So we need to have breathing room for the inevitable performance bonuses for KK/Suzuki/Romanov. To do that, we need to make a trade. While Kulak is great with Petry, it’s unlikely that he’ll play with Petry this year, because if he was the habs wouldn’t have signed Edmundson to the contract they did. And I also think that if he’s playing on the 3rd pairing, Kulak’s extra $1 million isn’t worth the difference between him and his replacement, which would be Mete. Mete is cheaper, as well as being more flexible since he can play both sides. And even if we get an injury or 2, we have an abundance of NHL-level D who could easily be nearly as good as Kulak would be.