Ottawa rejects. And Buffalo rejects the Eichel trade

I would much rather have Murray than Okposo, at least he showed flashes of bouncing back before he was injured last year. Okposo has been below replacement level for years. Expecting 3 top prospects on top of the better cap dump should get you locked in a room to prevent you from hurting yourself, there’s no explanation for this other than literal insanity.

edit: And this team is still trash. They might beat Arizona, and maybe 1 other team like Anaheim/San Jose/Columbus if they sell several pieces, but they’re not finishing higher than 30th.

BUF
Murray, Matt
Bernard-Docker, Jacob
Pinto, Shane
Gustavsson, Filip
Additional Details:
Maybe an overpay to dump Murray, but Murray is overpaid, too.
OTT
Okposo, Kyle
Caggiula, Drake
Asplund, Rasmus
MacInnis, Ryan
2023 2nd round pick (PHI)
2022 5th round pick (NJD)
Additional Details:
Okposo was front-loaded. Is cap floor magic, now.

It's like shopping, I'll take one of these, and one of these, and one of these, oh, I only have coupons

Ottawa hangs up mid call

Murray is owed $15M more than Okposo--21 to 6. Last year Murray finished 38th in spct and 78th in GAA. With 31 teams, he's a 2nd or 3rd string goalie. Okposo tied for 304th in points by a forward. He's a pretty good fourth liner. So both are exactly replacement level. Gustavsson covers the extra year of $6M cap hit. Docker covers the $15M difference in remaining salary. Mostly

Picks and prospects for PInto kind of balance things out? I don't know. But I think Buffalo could use a goalie and Gustavsson has shown only positive flashes at the NHL level. So I thought maybe the Pegulas offer to buy him. If Dorion gets a great offer on Tkachuk, like I keep seeing around this board, then this swap lets Ottawa spend below the floor this year and next, and clears cap space to make a run in 23-24. So, yeah, coupons. But in America, millions of people go shopping with just coupons.

Blah blah blah no

It’s not a good offer. Add some context to the numbers and you’d understand why. Murray is the number one goalie in Ottawa, and his contract is fine.

Thank you for explaining. Know of any teams that might trade a goalie?

Only @Alfie11 answered the question, "Where do they finish"
I think we need to examine the line up after the trade.
Skinner will bounce back with Kuznetsov at center and Oshie at RW and and that top line in a full season will get over 80 goals.
Cozens will mature, create great scoring chances for Olofsson and Sprong (he is going to be good BTW)
Mittelstadt and Thompson played really well over the last 20 games teamed with Asplund, I will imagine they will do as well with Bjork on the wing and maybe better as he has more scoring skills than Asplund.
The fourth line will KP much better than any Buffalo line over the past 10 years.
Shultz and Dahlin will be a solid top pairing while Butcher and Jokiharju will be solid.
I would most likely have had Bryson and Miller as only Ristolainen had more PK time than Bryson last year.
Either Hagg or Pysyk are better than any of the 7th D-men Buffalo had last year.
If Murray can regain his Stanley cup magic, this team will be in the hunt until March with Granato as their coach.
In a nutshell the RW is MUCH better with Oshie, Sprong and Dowd, LW is better as Skinner WILL rebound, Center is better as Kuznetsov will play more games than Eichel did, Defense is the same or slightly better and GK is better as Murray will play more games than Ullmark did.
One of the biggest factors that cannot be overlooked is that Kuznetsov, Oshie, Dowd, Sprong and Shultz all bring Stanley cup experience to the team.
They will hold the players accountable for their on ice and off ice performance.

As to the trade Washington is giving up too much.
Five good NHL players and three decent prospects.
Ottawa would most likely reject the trades as well, they think they can make a run at the playoffs and Murray is part of the ticket.




Thank you for posting this, I am surprised more Sabre ACGM did not comment mainly Ottawa's.

If everyone agrees Murray's still good, then Docker probably isn't in that conversation. I don't see it, but okay. So if Ottawa gets a great offer on Tkachuk, there might be some way to bring Murray in to start for the Sabres, but I'm not going to guess what they'd give up for the privilege. To me that trade was about Docker and Gustavsson.

I agree that Buffalo is getting more than they're giving up, in terms of immediate on ice performance, but they'd have to, in order to consider it. Oshie's good for 20-30 goals a year, and Kuznetsov's a steady 50-70 point center when coaches play him, but it takes adding a secondary scorer like Sprong and a PK/faceoff guy like Dowd to help a rebuilding team turn the corner and want to compete.

As far as making the playoffs, I think their division has four very good teams, that would be hard to beat. Detroit, Ottawa, and an aging Boston squad without a clear 2nd line center are picked by a lot of experts to miss the playoffs this year. For Boston that might take a few injuries, but this is hockey, and it's reasonable. Getting past any one of Tampa, Toronto, Florida, and Montreal is going to take a lot of luck. Those are four terrific teams without a lot of issues. With Kotkaniemi gone and a possible sophomore jinx for Suzuki, Montreal could stumble, but if Suzuki and Caufield keep improving and they stay healthy, I think the Habs finish fourth and the above Sabres could get stuck in 5th. Their next best hope is that Tampa or Toronto end up with huge Olympic hangovers and temporarily self-destruct.

Still, they have lots of picks and prospects to deal, and 15M of cap space open. This team could still make big moves, and add key players, if the guys expected to improve keep improving. But you also don't want to add many more veterans than this, all at once, because a team with Buffalo's prospect depth needs to keep opening up spots as guys move up to claim them.

I didn't know how to respond to this proposal... but thanks for doing the job

Add a first round pick and that package is worth Eichel... (I would even want the pick to be top-10 protected)

Bernard-Docker, Jacob
Pinto, Shane
Gustavsson, Filip

are 3 top prospects

Ottawa doesn't want to dump Murray. He'll have to really sink this upcoming season, and if that happens, he'll have 2 years left on his contract. Ottawa still won't sacrifice top prospects to get rid of him, they are barely at the cap floor (assuming they sign Tkachuk)

Not too worried about Murray, he had a 0.954 SV% in the 5 games he played in April once the team had figured out how to defend at a NHL level... so I am once again more worried about the defense.



NO, you just have no idea how good Pinto is going to be and how high the Ottawa Senators are on this kid.