Man these are awful for the non-Pittsburgh teams.

Bruh.

Rangers can only take Smith or Rust or whoever at 50%

We wouldn't pick up Rakell or Joseph off waivers. What in the world are you thinking? Or should I say ingesting? Did it even occur to you that Anaheim's 2024 second-round draft pick is almost guaranteed to be pick #35? There is literally not a single player on your team whom you would trade to us that we would spend that pick on.

ANA has zero interest in either of those players. ANA’s 2nd is more valuable than anything you’ve offered, and it isn’t close. That’s not even considering Vatrano. Take everything out and try again.

Vatrano would likely cost a first and a prospect or just a very enticing prospect. The only enticing prospect PIT has is Yager. I’m not sure they have any B level prospect that would be of interest with a 1st

Not a single team outside of Florida considers any of these

2025 1st and Yager is the only thing that we want imo

Pickering maybe

Pickering is a LhD, so he would be redundant in light of Mintyukov, LaCombe and Vaakanainen behind Fowler with Zellweger and possibly Hinds coming up. But you're absolutely right in that he has the kind of quality that we'd be considering if there was a fit there.

In terms of quality yes, but ANA has too deep of a LD pool as it is which is why I didn’t mention him

(Mintyukov, Zellweger, Lacombe, Vaakanainen, Hinds, Dionicio)

Dubas would need to have an unbelievable amount of incriminating evidence on every GM in the league to pull this off, even then the league would look into this because even Bettman would know something underhanded is going on.