If the concept of trade comps were a drug, people around here would be overdosing on that bad stash left and right. These are not a real thing, folks. Every situation is different, from teams needs to distribution of team assets to playoff outlooks to time marches on to not all trades are created equal in level of shrewdness to, well, pretty much every damn variable one can think of.

Besides, the people most drunk on the idea of trade comps always magically choose the dumbest trades of all-time to anoint as the scripture gospel of trade comps (in their team's favor, of course), and all ensuing trades must obviously be just as hare-brained. It is so written, you infidels!

Hear me now and believe me later: trade comps do not exist in the real NHL world.

The prosecution rests, your honors. Rebut/vote away.

Trade comps do exist, it’s called setting the market, however, the market does change and correct itself so it’s never perfect to use a trade comp

It varies on the type of player and the role.

Usually I see it with Depth Dman as normally they always get traded for 4th or 5th round picks

Top wings/Centers/Dman (especially RD) it varies on the other teams prospect return.

Okay, but how to decide which trade sets the comp?

And again, not every GM trades at a quality level with "the market". There are dumb trades and smart trades and trades that are fairly even for both sides. So if many trades don't follow "the market" is there even such a thing?

I think it's a good place to start. Whether you're buying, selling or exchanging, you're going to want a reference point to see what similar players have received in the past, and what might be reasonable to either start the discussion with or strive to aim for at the end of negotiations. Once you have your reference point, the other factors and variables come into play are are more important in actually pursuing the trade.

The latter part is the real work; you actually have to think about more than what "x player got in years yonder". Trade comparables are popular here because instead of actually putting a bit of research beyond scrolling a couple pages on Capfriendly, you can just say "this is what's going to happen because y got this for z". It's the illusion of arguing from a place of authority.

I think what people forget is trades are two teams trying to come to a perceived equal value, and what people always look for here is trying to get a bargain or better deal out of a transaction, instead of looking to see what's ultimately fair for both parties.

Yes but they aren't perfect

Good ones: Sam Reinhart or Pavel Buchnevich comparable for Kevin Fiala
Bad ones: Blake Coleman comparable for Artturi Lekhkonen

It's a good place to start but doesn't always work because the market is changing

1- See, I do not think Buch is a good trade comp at all, because the Rangers got fleeced. But hey, if every team wants to use that as a comp every time they trade with the Blues, I'm all for it.

2- Yeah, on a case by case basis. Which is why I say trade comps are quite meaningless.

The problem is every person/real life gm looks at value differently. the buch trade for example. maybe rangers REALLY overly valued blais and thought stl 2nd would be a higher draft selection. maybe rangers gm saw buch as a guy looking for top dollar and didnt think he would repeat his success from last year. I think you can use market value trade comps as a guideline (especially on this site) but obviously everyone has their own opinions on players. Theres also backstory on a lot of deals that you cant use as a good "comp" like the hall trade last year. or any of ottawas deals. the hoffman to SJS where they immediately flipped him and got significantly more was hilarious.

For example as a boston fan, I wanted to trade chara after the blackhawks beat us in the stanley cup. Saw his legs were gone and he was a defensive liability but we could have maximized the return there. in 2019 after the bruins lost the cup i thought they should have tried to trade krejci and krug and get younger. team was starting to be very old. I overvalued krejci and undervalued krug. I still to this day think defensively hes a 5/6 on any team. but hes a solid pp qb. So when you go into negotiations with a team if you think a player is only a 5/6 maybe you dont get full value because you are undervaluing his worth vs maybe another team is overvaluing. im not going to ask for a teams top player if i think krug sucks while i think the opposing team is gunna start low and work their way up if they really want the player.

You kinda furthered my point here. Grazie.

yes they do exist and are quiet revelent. the only problem is that people cherry pick trades like they do with stats.

Okay, so who should pick the correct comparable then?

Seriously, every person here is helping to make my point for me without realizing. If trade comps and the market and the various needs and the various evaluations are always shifting and/or totally subjective, then there's no such thing as trade comps. It's a media/fan-made dogma that doesn't actually have any basis in real trade talks between teams.

average a few out or try to account for different circumstances.

Heh. Okay then.

They aren't meaningless. Trade comparables are useful when assessing value but not a finished product

Like the market for mid 20s pending RFA winger is around a late 1st + okay prospect/player. Wild fans are saying they want a high 1st for Fiala wouldn't make sense then.

But I don't like when people cherry-pick trade comparables. Saying that Jones got Boqvist+ 2 firsts in return. That means Klingberg or whatever dman should get the same return.

1- Okay, well if you always have to change them to make them work, then they aren't legit, right?

2- I have no idea how you got that. There's a wide spectrum of players who fit that description every year.

3- Heh. When do people not do that? This is my point, they always pick the comp that suits their needs. Which makes it an entirely meaningless thing.

Honestly, it's kinda like everyone agrees with me/accidentally argues my case without realizing it. Oh well.

the poll is 6-1 against you. clearly trade comparables are a thing.

Riiight, because 7 votes in a CF poll decides it once and for all.

But seriously, every person saying "yes" has qualified their answer to the point where it sounds more like a "for all intents and purposes, no, not really".

seems pretty one sided.

you're expecting it to be exact when it's not.

Like I said, looks like a lot of "yes" votes saying "no" things.

Well, if it's not a strict guideline, and one has to adjust for this and for that and for the other, then the whole term loses all meaning. Which is precisely my point. And multiple people here, including you, correctly noted that folks tend to choose very slanted "comps" to serve their team's agenda. Which again defeats the purpose of what a trade comp is supposedly meant to do. No one seems to know who sets or how to set the official trade comps. If everyone has a different idea of what it should be, again... loses all meaning.

But I digress. My question was sufficiently answered, and about how I expected.

youre expecting something to be exact when it isn't. it's impossible to trade the exact same player to the exact same team for the exact same assets at the exact same time more than once. so it'll never be exact, it's literally impossible.

people using slanted comparables isn't a knock on the comparables it's a knock on that person. if you want accuracy you don't cherry pick, you look for as many comparables as possible and look for an average.

comparables are used and while they aren't exact they can be pretty accurate.

I never said anything about expecting them to be exact (I don't believe in the concept, remember). They should at least be, ya know, comparable. Doesn't really work out that way so much, but I've already explained my take on why they don't work out that way.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

I voted no: I think the idea of trade comparables starts and stops with the motion of precedence. All its existence does for us is establish context in a trade for us behind screens, not those in NHL front offices. Consider you wanted to create a "fresh" trade of which it's not one of the popular trades that makes its rounds in AGM. You find an instance of precedence in a prior trade. The outcomes are as follows:

1. You end up overvaluing the other team's player and members of your own fanbase present arguments against trading surplus value.
2. The deal is fair and the trade is accepted into the routine "lexicon" of rigamarole trades.
3. You have undervalued the player and the trading fanbase will politely inform you that your third-grade education levels may not be enough to get by in high society.

In any outcome all precedence does in our bubble is elicit approximate player values. There is no mathematical formula for a fair trade. It's why we're constantly blindsided by the moves made by actual NHL managers.

Others have mentioned it but they exist wholly as a good starting point. Prospect assessments change year-over-year. Draft pick values are not concrete. Player terms will either inflate or deflate a player with nearly unpredictable variance.

Any trade not made in the past 5 seasons should be dismissed outright. The game has inherently changed in that span of time.

I voted yes, but I get your point. Sort of.

In my opinion trade comparables give a good reference point for an amateur fan to work on. We can see how the market has worked in the past and it helps guesstimating how actual GMs perceive the value of a certain kind of asset. For example, we've seen what kind of returns the likes of Dillon or Scandella have brought in return at certain point of season, so it helps us to evaluate what is the perceived value of a player in certain role.

There's also the downside to it, because people can cherrypick from some ludicrous trades from the past. For example, the Ristolainen trade. Everyone knows it was a total f*ck up from Flyers. Now if some user here was to use that as a trade comparable...well that's just lazy isn't it? I'd like to think that the ones using stupid examples when it comes to making AGM posts are just actually stupid people who don't even bother thinking things through.

It's not perfect. It's mostly subjective. Valuating stuff always is.

Market is ever changing and as you said, there's more variables to each situation than people can count. But honestly if we, as amateurs and fans, get nothing to work from, the whole AGM forum should just be removed. We'd only be seeing blindly biased trades that would only help the team the post is made of with no regard to the trade partners at all.

I'd like to answer a question with another question - if you don't think trade comparables aren't viable way to evaluate players on, in what way would you do it?

The old fashioned way: By player/situation evaluation on a case by case basis. For instance, I firmly believe that anyone dealing with Vegas right now should force them harder over the barrel they put themselves over. No one should be giving them full value in any trade because of their dire situation.

But I do not agree losing the concept of trade comps would eliminate the use for AGMs. Frankly, the way they get used around here does no service to discussions because of the things you mentioned. Hockey trades are almost never forms to be filled out according to precedent regulations., so discussions would be more fun if they weren't, either. With trade comps such a big part of discussions, both here and with media types, we get the same trade ideas over and over and over. When people just set those crutches aside, we get the interesting, creative stuff to think about.