the sabres cant be your dumping ground. We have too many bad contracts already... moulson pommer bogosian gorges

Similar deal could be made with another team. I only chose the Sabres because they had a need at goalie prior to free agency, which is when BMac should have made this move.

You're not getting Kuzey for lower. He had all the leverage of the KHL/Olympics, you'd have to pay him $7.8M or he'd walk. Still a great deal for the Caps.

They actually don't need a goalie, Lehner is extremely underrated. The lack of a defense in front of him is what inflates some of his numbers. A team like Calgary, Vancouver or Arizona would have been the best places to move Grubauer to. But there really isn't a team that'd be willing to take Orpik as well as Grubauer. Not even Arizona, especially with them acquiring Hjalmarsson. The more likely scenario is us trading Orpik to New Jersey, while we throw in a sweetener to get it done. Adding Vanecek and Lewington should have been enough to entice the Devils into taking two years of Orpik.

And we can't blame Maclellan for signing Kuznetsov to that contract. Let's say that Maclellan calls Kuzy's bluff and doesn't give him that contract. Then he leaves for the KHL and comes back three years later, this time as a UFA. Would you rather have Kuznetsov at the contract he is, or never see him with the Caps again? Think about how long it took us to find a second-line center. We had Ribiero for a while, but we haven't had a good 2C in a long time, and Kuzy is practically a top line guy on most teams.

I do think trading Orpik was the much better way to go than trading MOJO, and he could have potentially gotten Kuzy and Orlov locked up for smaller AAVs before now. But I can't blame him completely for what happened this offseason, so much got thrown out of whack for him that he didn't have much time to react.

I can certainly blame BMac. Kuz had no real leverage. He could threaten to leave for the KHL, and who knows if he would ever get paid or if his team would even exist in a year. If BMzc had held firm on a long $6-6.5M per deal, Kuz would have taken it. Instead, he let himself get fleeced again.

And trading Orpik with Grubi WAS offering a sweetener. The team gets a cost-controlled goalie for cheaper than market value in exchange for taking on an overpaid 3rd pair dman, who has been a locker room leader and mentor. Grubi is better than most of the goalies signed this offseason, and Orpik isn't useless like some of the other big contracts moved in the last 2 offseasons.