Why would you trade Pasta for Eichel straight up? Pasta is healthy, Eichel wants back surgery never done before. Pasta is one of the best goal scorers in the league. Eichel had 2 last year. I don't understand this move from a Boston perspective.

Eichel is going to be fine if he would be allowed to get his surgery. That gives us a bonafide franchise center, who's going to be happier than a pig in **** playing for his local team locked up on a below market deal for the foreseeable future, as opposed to a franchise winger who's contract is up shortly and is going to be looking for stupid money when we also have to sign our young franchise defenseman to a contract next off season. Talent wise Eichel and Pasta are comparable in that they are both Franchise makers, it's a wash. I personally would rather a cost controlled center than a winger because centers are harder to find than wingers.

Heh. Cost-controlled... at 10M per.

Pasta has more value than eichel, by a very very significant margin.

Pasta almost certainly would not re-sign in Buffalo too …

Yeah, that number isn't going to change for a long time, hence controlled. Also I'm assuming that the Cap starts going up after this year and with the new tv deal in place it should be significant, so every year that contract goes on the percentage of payroll it takes up goes down.

That's true, it should drop from taking 12% of the cap to more like 11%.

Why would you assume the cap is going up after this year. Literally every shred of evidence indicates it won’t go up until around 2025. Snowballs chance in hell you might get a million bucks added on at some point in the next couple years.

Yeah I don't think so, with the revenue they are going to get from the US TV deal and stadiums being at full capacity you'll see them going up steadily over the next few years.

Pasta > Eichel

I don’t think you have an understanding of the negotiations that took place to return to play during covid. I’m not just venturing my opinion. These are openly reported facts. GMs have said they’ve been told the cap won’t go up in any meaningful way until 2025.

Here is what happened: The owners lost money this year and last year. Lots of it. 75% of league revenue is generated from people going to games. The went back to play this year without the cap going down, with an agreement that the cap would remain flat for many years.

So you can see whatever you want, but it’s not going to happen, and you’re literally ignoring every single shred of evidence regarding this issue.

I bet just about every NHL GM would choose Pasta over Eichel. I'm not completely sure you need a true #1C, 2 out of the 4 teams in the conference finals didn't have a #1C. You can drop a whole bunch of centers between Pasta and Marchand and they will make him look good. Look what Panarin has done for Strome.

I wouldn’t take judgments on how to build a hockey team based off this weird season. The only good team in the NHL that doesn’t have a real number one center is vegas.