No. Dallas will not be including any of their top-5 prospects in trades that involves aging declining D-men.

Replace Bourque with lesser prospect like Damiani or Gleason and ease the cap strain from our end and maybe we could discuss.

The Leafs are not acquiring James Reimer. It's a fantasy from Leafs fans who still have a hard on for him. They need some consistency from a #1 starter that isn't in his mid-30s.

TOR and DAL decline
Arz would probably prefer a 3rd+5th or 6th
Balcers is a great defensive fwd who isn’t bad at offense. I can’t see the colorado pick being t25 so sjs shouldn’t do that deal

Ease the cap? He’s half retained in this trade, come on now. I get not wanting to move bourque but the sharks aren’t taking back cap when they are already retaining half.

I think you could probably get Damiani (#6 prospect), Mascherin (#7 prospect) and a 1st for Burns at 50% retained.

I like the retention but I don't see how DAL can add Burns' contract to their roster otherwise.

Just take Dobby or some sh*t. Gives us a year to make him fit in the lineup

Colorado would decline also. Balcers is a fine player but I think you’re overvaluing him a bit here.

Clearing EJ would be huge for COL. The main argument I see with him is that he expires when Mackinnon expires so it isn’t that important of a dump. It could be the difference of bringing back one more of burakovsky, nichushkin, Lehkonen, Kuemper which is important as next yr is the last yr mac has a really good contract and col needs to take advantage of that regardless of how 2021-22 ends for COL. Plus they bring in Balcers who doesn’t have a lot of notable flaws in his microstats and his value stats are nice. His pt totals don’t show his full value and his ppg don’t even suck

He’s a solid player but I wouldn’t trade a 2023 1st for him. Middle 6 forwards and replacement level defensemen don’t command this type of package.

The first is to not have EJ at 6M on col so they can maybe sign an additional useful asset. Getting balcers is just an incentive to dump EJ in sjs vs another city

EJ is overpaid for one year. Not ideal but hardly a negative value asset.

Balcers is a fine player but most of his 5v5 advanced stats are equivalent to JT Compher. Compher is also a Center and plays more PK and PP than Balcers. If you swapped Balcers for Compher would you do this trade? Of course not, that’s ridiculous lol.

I followed Meloche as a prospect and I’m glad he’s made it to the NHL. That said, he wouldn’t crack the Avs lineup unless there are injuries. Might as well just pick up a similar 7th defenseman on waivers.

Compher and Balcers play differently but provide similar value but i could see a world of col having both. EJ isn’t terrible but like I said it’s worth clearing him to keep something that is actually super valuable to the lineup as they need to push hard next season. Not a single dollar of cap should feel wasted on that col roster next season bc it will get tougher when mac is making an 8 digit number every season

I would rather spend 2m to have stecher, kulak, trade a 3rd or so to get bear at that price. No need to use a 2nd or 3rd RD slot on a 6mil dollar defenseman that is ok but prob worth about half his deal at best

I think you missed my point. I’m not saying Compher and Balcers are redundant, I’m saying that this trade value is way off. I used Compher as an example of an equivalent player so you could imagine a package that would be a clear no. The trade is bad.

You are overvaluing Balcers. Erik Johnson is overpaid by like $2-3M. An extra $2M in cap space for one year is not worth giving up a 1st round pick. Would any sane person do Erik Johnson + 1st for Stetcher? Of course not.