Habs will put him on waivers first before they trade him, i think you're asking a bit too much from the habs anyways

As a Habs fan, I'd do that deal with Boston's 2nd coming back to us instead of Colorado's. Pretty smart trade though

Thanks. That's an entirely reasonable counter-offer.

At worst, I'd waive/give Armia away, but he wouldn't be my first choice. I might pay to move Hoffman, but only if necessary. No reason to make any such moves right now.

Armia would be a good addition to get to the floor and offer all situations support to a developing roster. You could take worse players/contracts to extract assets, but I can't see Montreal taking negative value to move out his contract.

I'm almost certain both armia and hoffman will get claimed if they were waived

That's what I thought about Adam Henrique, who came back from being placed on waivers to finishing third on the team in scoring. And he recorded more points in 58 games than Hoffman did in 67.

Bruins gladly accept. Need the cap space.

Armia yes. Not so sure about Hoffman. The market is pretty weak right now and he doesn't bring much value to a rebuilding team who needs sheltered minutes for their youth, nor to a contender with an inappropriate AAV for a limited role as a PP specialist.
Take off all the teams concerned with past drama and consider that similar or better players have recently been offered for below market value, and it wouldn't surprise me to see him clear waivers or even be bought out.

Don't like the idea of Armia on the 4th line at all. 3.4 AAV cap hit for three years of term is a major turn off. Only two years of term would be a lot easier to justify taking on.

It also doesn't help that his actual dollars next season is 4.8M. For that kind of money a team should be getting 20-25 goals (or more), not 5-10.

I know all that. If necessary, we can always put him on waivers. My main idea here was the trade up plus the chance that Norlinder is the real thing. I know that we're tremendously deep in LD prospects with Zellweger, Mintyukov, LaCombe, Hinds and Thrun, but it never hurts to take a free Mike Trout swing at the fences.

To start, you're taking a gamble on waivers solving a problem that you create by taking on that really bad contract. I'm not so certain Armia would get claimed. I'd need a crystal ball to know for sure, but if waivers is the answer then why wouldn't MTL use that path instead of giving up assets.

The trade up is almost a non-factor. Let's assume for a moment that MTL has pick 36 and the COL is 62. The difference in value of those two picks is a 4th rounder (about 106 OA). And you give almost half of that value back in the 6th.

Norlinder has to be a huge success for this to pan out in the positive for Anaheim. I'll be honest I don't know the first thing about him as a prospect, but we both know the Anaheim guys you listed off and you're hoping this kid is better than all of the others. Big time risk IMO.

I don't understand why we'd need to have Armia claimed if we put him on waivers. If unclaimed, he'd go down to San Diego just like John Moore, wouldn't he?

It sounds like its as simple as you are willing to eat his contract for three years and I'm not. Interesting that you bring up Moore as a comparable. He has less AAV and a single year left on that. For taking that contract Boston gave the Ducks a 2nd. That's the frame work for a deal I have no issue with, but this Armia proposal is a different animal.

It could well be that I'm mesmerized by the bright shiny object of an advance in draft position.

Had some time to scan drafts from 2014-2018 for a sense of player quality in the 2nd round. Nothing exact or scientific mind you, just a general sense. The round is very chaotic on where teams hit on good players. In the older of those drafts you are able to see a guy with 200-300 games played over the whole round mixed in with lots of misses also over the whole round. 2014 was of particular note for this conversation because the Ducks took Petterson #38 (294 GP) and Montour #55 (374 GP). Montour has the most games played out of the entire round. There were only two other guys over 350. Barbashev went #33 and Dvorak went #58 to book end the round (only 30 picks total per round in that draft).

This is born out in the numeric pick valuation that I use. The first pick of the 2nd round is a 5.7 while the last eight picks in the round are all 4.0 in that data source.

Bottom line to me is that if you are sitting on the draft floor and there's a kid the scouts are saying is a must have and you need to trade up to get him then you do it. The summer before the draft there just isn't any point of doing so. You don't know where the picks are and you don't know who is on or off the board.