Joined: Jul. 2018
Posts: 328
Likes: 229
This trade is horrible for Vancouver, and it's the best move Yzerman has made in quite awhile.
The thing with this trade is that the value isn't crazy. If Edmonton made a similar trade, you can accept it. This is because when you trade in a way that makes strategic sense for where your team is on it's trajectory, you don't need to "win" every trade. You can break even on trades, or even lose in terms of overall value, but if the trades converts value that is less useful for you into value that is more useful, you can do ok, and your moves are defensible and less risky. In those scenarios, you can either break even, or win your trades on average, without worrying about the direct outcome of each individual trade. It's why the strategy of tearing it down and building it up is so strong. Just following the blueprint and doing ok in your trades works out fine. If you are in the rebuild mode, you can trade current value for future value, and as long as you do OK on average, your blueprint will lead to a period of contention and relevance. You need to stick to it, and avoid any false starts, but you don't need to win every single trade outright. Same is true with contenders, you can somewhat trade away assets that would mostly have helped you stay mediocre during a phase where maybe you should be rebuilding again, because those assets aren't going to be as valuable to you as players that can help your core potentially maximize their window.
However to do a real Re-tool on the fly, which is apparently what Vancouver is insisting on, you need to win your trades. Because you are basically trading current/near future value for current/near future value, the only way you improve is if you get significantly more value back than you traded away. Vancouver has not done that in this trade. They paid max value for a player that doesn't put them over the hump. The team that started this season was obviously no where near good enough to compete. Next year they will start without Horvat, but have Hronek and Beauvllier. That's a downgrade, and what they got for that downgrade, and that downgrade takes up as much cap space as they would likely have had to use to sign Horvat, and they got Raty as the prize for taking that downgrade. That just makes no sense.