Remember when Columbus traded away a near 30 goal scorer for scraps because they had no cap space? They still don't.

And it's not like their defence is all that great either.

Peake is gonna be good not great. They are waiting for Corson Ceulmans to develop and between now and then, Peake doesn't help them win a cup. Playing 3 rookie/sophomore centers is a bad idea for any team.

This is a good deal for both teams.

Edit: and if they send a few players to the AHL who are not in the starting lineup anyway... They can afford this deal.

people who follow CBJ know this isnt a good deal for them. They cant do 3 years of 4.45, Boone Jenner, Jack Rosolvic, Sean Kuraly arent rookes/sophmores. Their defense was abysmal and peeke is a strong developing defensive defenseman who led the league in TOI/$ last year. This is not a good deal for CBJ

It's still a longer term financial issue, not to mention the market right now is not going to let you make a trade with this much cap discrepancy - MTL would need to add. It is also a roster issue - we have plenty of T9 Fs as is, young guys who need playing time. Blankenburg is still waivers exempt, so I'm not worried about him needing playing time as compared to Peeke, who I think still has room to grow into, like you said, a solid middle-pairing guy.

Maybe he gets flipped in a year or two once Jiricek/ CC are ready, or if Blankenburg turns into what the coaches think he can be; but, until then, D depth/options isn't a bad thing. Moving him would require someone pushing an over-pay.

Frankly, Dvorak is a guy who consistently strikes me as...fine. In terms of "insulating the young guys," that would need to be in the form of a 1C, and for as fine as Dvorak is, I don't see him as the sort of bona-fide 1C whose play would be eminently better between JG and Laine than Roslovic or Jenner would be.

They really can't - this deal has them acquiring about $3.66M in cap (Dvorak's $4.45M - Peeke's $787K), and CF has them with $416K in cap space available right now with 26 players at the NHL level. You can obviously put Daniil Tarasov($1.05M) in the AHL as a 3rd, AHL-ready goalie; and presumably two of their ELC forwards (Chinhakov/Johnson?) would go down to the AHL too. ($925K/$925K). You've only cleared $2.9M there, meaning they either have to put down a waivers-eligible player and risk losing them (Eric Robinson's $1.6M strikes me as the most likely candidate) or run a 22-man roster (less than ideal!) Dvorak's just not that good enough of a player, to me, to force myself to do this much roster gymnastics to accommodate (while also weakening my RD depth chart to boot!)

Beyond that, center is actually a position where CBJ has strong depth - Cole Sillinger just put up decent NHL numbers as an 18 year old, Jack Roslovic is a great bonus from the Dubois-Laine trade, Boone Jenner is a team leader with 4 years left on his deal (at a lower cap hit than Dvorak, too!) and Sean Kuraly does all the defensive/PK stuff Dvorak would bring for half the cost. It's just not a position that CBJ needs to devote more assets to right now, IMO.