I think Pronman has become probably one of the better prospect observers out there.
Pronman gets his lists by talking to actual scouts. Kind of like McKenzie and his drat lists.

Smaht Scouting is also very good.
McKeens also good.

Scott Wheeler, Dobber, Ryan Kennedy....these are guys to ignore.

THW had Muk in the 80s and Raty in the 50s for best drafted prospects fwiw

Brennan is also a 4th round pick and 5 years away at least so we have no idea what we have there

Again I'm OK with Brennan just pull back a pc or make it less that Shara

I don't think it gets done without Yegor unless we're giving up Holtz, which we shouldn't. Sharks need a C.

You may be right, but they need a C a D a 1st, it's not all on the menu

Meier's QO gives him the same leverage as a pending UFA

Gonna be in for a rude awakening when the trade happens and it's like, Muk, Stillman, Daws, 1st

Maybe. Has that happened? No. Can Mr Pretzel predict the future? No.

Meh, debatable. Depends how willing he is to sign for less than his QO, SJ did give permission to negotiate unlike Vancouver

If he's signing long term it will be under his QO. Nobody's signing him to 10 unless he makes them.

And you can?

That's my point. Using his QO as an argument to call him a rental is dumb unless you are a team that can't afford to pay him as anything more than a rental (ie Calgary or Minnesota)

Yes but how is Meier's situation any different for when teams are trading for pending UFAs though?
It's not like you suggest that the general trade return for pending UFAs increase if the trading team has the cap space to give him another contract, is it?

Huh? Because he's not a pending UFA, he can't just freely walk to another team in July

He has the right to take a 1x10m contract and walk at the end of it. If that's what he wants, there's nothing that can stop him. If the team refuses, he becomes a UFA immediately. That's why he has so much leverage

The team has to choose not to extend a qualifying offer first. Then he has the choice. But even then the team can file for arbitration to nullify the QO all together. You are really not viewing all the options here

Great, so the team elects arbitration, he gets awarded 7-8m for one year, and then he walks. Not much better.

Clearly you completely tuned out what happened with Tkachuk this summer

Tkachuk went to a team he was willing to extend with. He only signed the extension with CGY because he knew he was going where he wanted to be.

Tkachuk still worked to get a long term deal done instead of giving the organization the middle finger and signing a 1 year deal before walking to anywhere. Extremely pessimistic it is then

Do you think I'm saying Meier is going to do that no matter what? I'm saying he has UFA-like leverage and can choose where he goes, which lowers his value

No he can't, because unless a team chooses not to qualify him or file for arbitration he is guaranteed 1 more year at minimum with that team