I don’t think Ottawa would do that

I don't think so either.

We don't need another goalie and Schmaltz strikes me as a bit "meh".

Schmaltz is very skilled but he’s inconsistent and yeah Ottawa doesn’t need KV

and who did that 7th overall pick end up being?

Yeah Ottawa isn't doing that, Why would they give up the 7th overall pick for players that don't put them over the hump?

Lias Andersson

Looking at history can have value as it sets precedence. However - assuming this is in the context of Minnesota and Kevin Fiala - I fully believe the situations between the 2017 Rangers and the 2022 Wild couldn't be further apart. There was an expectation that one of Kevin Hayes and/or JT Miller were going to become the incumbent #2C behind Zibenejad as the Rangers continued to get younger and younger: Stephan and Raanta were both extraneous assets to a team that already had the "next generation of Rangers' center" and both Lundqvist and Georgiev between NHL pipes. Minnesota is in a much more cap-related situation where they have to lose either Fiala or another set of players in order to accommodate the Parise and Suter buyouts. The Rangers wanted to move quality roster pieces for futures, the Wild have to move those same pieces. If the Wild could have their cake and eat it too, there'd never be conversations surrounding Fiala's availability.

I do believe that the ask of #7++ for Fiala is ridiculous but I do believe he's very much worth the price of the #7 pick straight-up.

Kemell may or may not be obligated to play out the final two years of his deal in Finland: reasonable expectations after having seen recent top-10 picks coming out of Liiga suggests that he should get at least one of those years overseas. Immediately there's an argument to be made about return on investment: are the Senators a team that care about the NHL product or a team that cares about their U20 WJC product? Kemell is anywhere between 1-3 years away from playing in the NHL. Fiala is a point-per-game winger today who also hasn't had proper center support in like half a decade.

If you subscribe to the philosophy of NHLe, Kemell finished his Liiga season with a D0-season NHLe of 21.326. His ppg production is relatively similar to Anton Lundell's (NHLe D0 = 23.012; granted the points come in entirely different ways). Lundell's D+1 season saw an NHLe of 34.771 and a D+2 pace of 55.507 points per 82. About a 1.5x multiplier per season. I would suspect this be the high water mark for Kemell as well as the majority of top Finnish prospects have struggled with the transition to NHL hockey.

Even if you're banking on Kemell posting 50 points in his D+2 season, Fiala has put up 70+-point paces for the past three seasons. I think the risk in Fiala failing to live up to that kind of production is a lot smaller than the risk of Kemell not even becoming an NHL regular. He went 18GP: 3G-2A-5Pts to close out his season, I take considerable pause with that.

The Bruins are (finally) on the verge of collapse and nobody knows what Florida and Montreal will be next year. Buffalo and Detroit don't have the horses right now to reliably make the playoffs. I think the Senators' window is beginning to open and adding one of the best wingers in the league right now would be a monumental add for the franchise.

Great stuff


As of right now, what do you think the odds are that Edmonton will need to give up 2 second round picks instead of 1 after the series against Colorado?


https://www.capfriendly.com/trades/oilers?season=2022&conditional-draft-pick

At this point I feel like it's a 50-50 and will largely depend on both how Woodcroft chooses to deploy the Edmonton blue against Bednar's Avalanche and how the forward lines are set up.

I can see a reality where Keith slides to 5th in TOI: Kulak is not being used enough and I think Bouchard finally shows that he has the horses to contend with the best Colorado ices. Keith's had a pretty negative on-ice effect thus far (was routinely turnstyled by Backlund last series) so I hope the Oilers staff took notice and reign him in a bit. He's effective when he's not being asked to do too much.

Likewise if Edmonton can convince themselves to separate Draisaitl and McDavid then I fully believe the Avalanche are in a tight spot, especially if Draisaitl is ever-closer to 100%. The duo of Hyman and Nugent-Hopkins quashed MacKinnon's line in the three-game series we saw this past season and McDavid ate Kadri alive without having Kane for two of those games (iirc). This could leave the Draisaitl-Yamamoto duo to feast on their choice of the Avalanches' third or fourth lines. If Edmonton opts to run

Kane-McDavid-Draisaitl
Hyman-RNH-Puljujarvi
Foegele-McLeod-Yamamoto

as their top-three lines, then I think the Oilers will lose the match-up every time that third line hits the ice (great 5v5 numbers but it does not produce), and will likely lose games by a two-goal margin as the task of containing the Oilers' mighty offense becomes so much easier. Word out of the organization that Holloway won't play in these playoffs is ridiculous and he could straight-up be the difference-maker up front. His Hall-esque game already compliments what Draisaitl does nightly and it would mean minutes away from a largely ineffective Josh Archibald. A Foegele-McLeod-Kassian energy line intrigues me against what looks like an otherwise pretty lame fourth line in Colorado.

I think the Girard injury is going to matter a lot more in this series than most expect: Manson may be a fine shutdown defender but he's got the legendary Jack Johnson in tow. One of McDavid or Draisaitl are going to be able to expose that pairing on a nightly basis. The Burakovsky-Compher duo scares me a touch and I think you could see a lot of 5v5 production out of them in this series assuming the top-two lines are evenly matched.

Oilers in 6. Can't see them losing at home and I can very much see them stealing Game 1 or 2.