Quoting: Ledge_And_Dairy
Do you not realize Calgary's cap crunch next year? Meier will be getting at minimum 7.5M next season and could easily demand higher due to his QO. Between Huberdeau, Weegar, and Vladar Calgary is already handing out just over 6M in raises alone with Lucic (5.25M) being the only relevant cap hit coming off the books. So how exactly do you fit Meier in there? You can't.
Valimaki is a poor example and we gave up on him for even poorer reasons. When the Mark Stone trade occurred he was viewed as a highly valued prospect and Calgary couldn't afford to extend Stone. Valimaki is now playing great in Arizona and is proving how we screwed up.
As for Wolf, maybe go and look up the list of goalies that put up his kind of numbers in their D+3 AHL rookie year in the last decade. Here's a hint, between them there are 2 cup rings, 1 Vezina winner, 1 Jennings, and 3 Vezina finalists (including the win). Only one of those 5 goalies has not panned out as a full time starter in the NHL.
I think if Calgary wants to add a Meier type player Mantha is a much more realistic target unless the plan is to pay rental price on Meier only.
But the point is that---even with a cap crunch---Meier is a better player than most of the other guys on the roster, many of whom should be easily movable if you have to. Lucic's money comes off, so we're not stuck with another Monahan situation where we'd have to pay to clear room.
For example, paying $3.25M to Zadorov on the 3rd pairing is a luxury, not a necessity. Paying Meier would be more important.
If the cap does go up the reported $4M, and you dump Zadorov, you've got $8.54M to fill out your roster for next year. Dump Toffoli, and now you've got $12.8M, with 5-6 spots to fill. You could easily give Meier something in the $8.5M range and fill out your roster with cheap or young guys like Pelletier, Phillips, Ritchie, Stone etc.
Is it ideal---no. But wanting to keep guys like Toffoli or Zadorov over a guy like Meier is a flat out stupid reason for not being willing to make the trade.
Your argument for Valimaki makes no sense. The lesson to be learned is overvaluing prospects based on what they *might* become without accounting for all of the other possible outcomes and probabilities. Yes, it was possible Valimaki would become a player more valuable than Mark Stone would have been. But it was far more likely he wouldn't be. We vastly overvalued him. You can make up whatever excuses you want to to justify it. But all of the reporting at the time of the trade was consistent----we were confident we could get an extension done with stone, but the deal breaker was that we didn't want to give up Valimaki. Feel free to look up all of the reporting from that day from Friedman, Steinberg, Leslie etc.
As for Wolf, if you're relying on raw save percentage to project what he's going to be at the NHL level, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. Comparing him to Vezina winners is absolutely ridiculous. There are still a ton of question marks about what he'll be in the NHL, and when. Great prospect, for sure. Far from untouchable, especially for a guy like Timo Meier. Nobody else in the league is valuing Wolf anywhere close to the level Flames fans are who are looking at nothing but raw save percentage, which is a horrible determinant of talent or future NHL success.
Meier would be a perfect addition. Yes, things would get uncomfortable with the cap for next year, but that was always going to be the case, and the cap is not impossible. Plus the cap is expected to keep going up significantly, so it really only causes heart burn for that one year. And makes the team better.