Preds pass. The Skinner contract is worse and the other pieces aren’t enough for Ekholm.

Youre getting an unprotected first and the Sabres are making a lateral move just to take a flyer on Skinner rebounding in a system where he isnt anchored to the 4th line

NSH is going to looking for a 1st+ for Ekholm (similar return to the Muzzin trade). I'd much rather stick it out with Johansen over taking Skinner's longer contract. Thompson isn't of much interest.

The 1st is nice. I didn’t realize it would be unprotected. But I still don’t think it’s enough. Johansen is still playing top 6 minutes, whereas Skinner is either 4th line or scratched. Skinner also has a NMC, which there is no guarantee he would waive (expansion draft). And then they’d also get a defenseman back that needs protection as well. The Skinner contract might be the worst one in the league right now other than Karlsson. Maybe Johansen + 3rd for Skinner $1m retained and a top 5 protected 2021 1st. But even then I don’t know. Ekholm sways the value too much in your initial deal.

He would have to waive it to be traded. Skinners production is a direct result of playing on the 4th line or being scratch, so I dont see how its a positive that Johansen is playing in the top 6. Skinner started the year getting 12 minutes a game, Kreuger just hates him, Johansen is getting opportunities and failing

Johansen's only played 11 games this year due to injury, so meh. When the whole team is failing as a whole (other than Forsberg basically) I think there is something more to it than just Johansen = bad.

While I think he's been disappointing, he still has other facets to his game other than points (though he has definitely been lacking there though recently). He's extremely good at faceoffs, has very good underlying numbers -- corsi, etc., he's good defensively and has played a lot of PK (less so under Hynes for whatever reason).

I mean, it sucks that he's not getting points, but he looks good otherwise. It's just that you don't pay a guy $8m to have good fundamentals, you pay a guy $8m to put up points lol -- definitely disappointing, but I would rather have him than Skinner hands down (probably some bias there, but it is what it is).

And last season, Skinner's most common linemates were Eichel + Reinhart. He didn't look good then either.

Last season Skinner played with Eichel and Reinhart less than 10% of the season, they werent even close to his most common line mates

Fair. Was looking at F/O stats apparently, didn't realize it -- https://puckbase.com/stats/faceoff-linemates?player=jeff-skinner&year=2019 -- probably inflated due to the PP.

If you look at that 10% with Eichel + Reinhart, he only got 1 EVS point playing with them.

I agree that his usage under the coach is stupefying (why you have $9m invested in a guy), but I don't think he's really doing anything special on any team unless he's glued to a superstar center (Eichel).

1 EVS point in 6 games though

NMC travels with the player now. So Nashville would have to accept Skinner with his NMC and protect him in the expansion draft. To me the detractor is, Skinner has 2 extra years on his contract vs Johansen. Nashville also doesn't really have good center prospects (I count Tomasino as a wing as I think that's where he'll end up in the NHL) or anyone to really pick up 2C so trading Johansen creates a void at C.

https://pittsburghhockeynow.com/sorting-the-full-details-and-changes-of-new-6-year-nhl-cba-reports/

Both our team have coaches that make more than questionable lineup decisions so it's not like Skinner would come here and be put in a place to succeed.