Quoting: exo2769
Is it possible he scores 35 goals on the Hawks...maybe but it's also possible he scores 24 or 14 or 7...because those all happened too. You can be bias towards Skinner just as I can be bias toward Jones, but at least he's consistent. $9M for a guy (yes you retained above which seems odd because we can all admit he's a cap dump...so just do it) that you don't know what you're getting...because he was that way in Carolina too! He could scores 33, but he could also score 13, or 18, or 20. The ONLY way I take Skinner off your hands is the #11 OA. His contract is that bad. And elite shouldn't be used for him anymore either...probably shouldn't have never been used for him to begin with to be honest.
I agree with a lot of this, I'd do 11oa myself. I will say that context is important here, it's fair to say that Skinner may not hit certain goal benchmarks because of age, he is on the wrong side of 30. It's not fair to base projections on seasons where he was being shamed by his coach for not playing defense. His ice time and goal totals suffered as he languished on the 4th line or the press box for large parts of those seasons. Personally I'm fine with the coach demanding that players play their system, but how do you shame a player with a long term 9 million dollar contract and a full nmc? The answer is- you can try, but they can wait you out, and since Krueger was in fact a horrible coach, eventually the teams succes was tied to decisions like punishing Skinner, as a reason for the team losing (like misappropriation of resources). Of course when Krueger got fired, granato came in, and as a developmental coach, allowed the team to play pond hockey, wanna guess who liked that? So in a system where he's not expected to pretend to play defense, and given reasonable talent to play with, Skinner likely hits 25-30 goals for the next few years. I don't want him around the young players, I want the young players to do what the coach tells them, which hopefully leads to winning hockey games, which is something that Skinner, after 1000 nhl games, has never been a part of. So yes, I think depending on utilization, 25-30 is reasonable (although probably not 40), and I'd pay something decent to move him. And at the end of the day, he will just veto the trade, and the Sabres will play him on the third line for one more season before buying him out. That's what I've got anyways.