The only issue is the caps can’t really afford to retain salary on kuznetsov and add both those guys. Otherwise I’d totally do that

A far, far better idea than adding Dubois. Our top 9 would be: Byfield - Kopitar - Kempe, Moore - Danault - Kaliyev, Fiala - Kuznetsov - Vilardi. Think about it.

The Caps wouldn't be doing all the retention, just a million or so with the rest done by a pass-through team. Here's an example of how the roster could look after this trade.

The Capitals aren’t going to retain that much for
Two seasons for two players they don’t really need. Arvidsson and Iafallo aren’t much incentive for Washington to do this. Turn Iafallo and Arvidsson into Draft Picks and the Capitals are far more likely to consider and the Picks will have to be pretty good too if the Caps are retaining.

Passing on a Dubois trade for ****ing Kuznetzov is like if Pittsburgh passed on Sidney Crosby for Bobby Ryan, fine player but come on

Dubois is a divisive, selfish, overpaid, underperforming prima donna who has quit on two teams and two sets of teammates now. If he's so great, how come there hasn't been a whisper about Chicago being interested in him? They certainly have the draft capital and cap space to make him an easy absorption.

Unlike Stan Bowman, Kyle Davidson understood not to rush the rebuild and now that we’re getting Bedard, it’s impractical to get him because they play the same position

"Rush the rebuild"?!?!? You'd be signing him for 7 seasons. And we have Kopitar, Danault, Byfield, Kupari and Lizotte at center, who are five times as many people at "the same position" as Bedard, so that argument is ridiculously bogus, too.

Kopitar is old and expires at the end of the season gives enough room for PLD

It also gives us enough room for Auston Matthews, who won't clutter up our roster THIS season, or cost us anything. I'd rather wait and bet on that small chance than buy the cancerous Dubois now.

A quitter is a quitter. A two-fold quitter doesn't get a third chance.

If Dubois is such a great commodity, don't you find it odd that not one team -- NO team, not one single team -- has been "linked" or rumored to be interested in Dubois other than the Kings through Elliotte Friedman's one-hand-on-the-keyboard, one-hand-in-his-lap musing?

I refer for your consideration the Sherlock Holmes story "Silver Blaze" and the anecdote of "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

As I said in the description, the Caps do some of the retention and a third team does the rest on a pass-through like the Wild did for Orlov.

With the Avs trading for Johansen, the options to get decent value in picks for Kuznetsov are really limited. I can't think of another team that needs a center, has the cap room to add a guy like Kuzy without sending salary back in return, and isn't likely to be on Kuznetsov's no-trade list.

I like the fit of Iafallo with McMichael to form a strong two-way line in the middle six, and Arvidsson's a better, Swedish version of Sheary, so I like his fit with Backstrom. If they don't work out they can easily be traded for picks at the deadline.



This might get the award for the most tortured analogy I've ever seen on this site. Comparing it to draft picks implies they'd cost the same, but Kuznetsov would cost less in assets to acquire and would come at a significantly lower cap hit than PLD's expected extension, leaving the Kings with more room for goaltending. Comparing PLD coming off a career-high 63 point season to Crosby and Kuzy coming off a down year that was all of 8 points below PLD's career best to Bobby Ryan is hilarious. PLD's a career 0.70 PPG player, Kuzy's a career 0.81 PPG player and deserved the Conn Smythe the year the Caps won the Cup. The disrespect he gets here is really getting out of hand.

I swear, if PLD was Pytor-Luka Dubov from Chelyabisnk and EK was Eugene Kouchner from Ste-Agathe-Des-Monts their valuations on this site would be damn near flipped.