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Eddie_Spaghetti

Book em, Danno
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Jun. 17, 2022
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Forum: NHL TradesMar. 8 at 5:21 p.m.
Thread: (PIT/CAR) - Guentzel, Smith for Bunting, Koivunen, Ponomarev, Lucius, 2024 2nd (PHI), 2024 5th (CAR)
My opinion seems to be different from the consensus here.

My initial gut reaction when the trade was announced was Dubas hit a home run, and giving up a top-6 forward with term and half of your prospect pool for a rental you’re probably not going to re-sign is uncharacteristically irresponsible for Waddell. He’s always seemed to find a way to contend now while also building for the future – probably a smart strategy for a team in a non-traditional small market that probably wouldn’t have the patience for another long rebuild.

After sleeping on it, I still think Pittsburgh got a great return for a rental – more on why later – but I like it for Carolina too. They have a lot of players with contracts expiring this summer and next. (Only Aho, Svechnikov, Kotkaniemi, Staal and Kochetkov are signed beyond that.) They should be able to keep some of them, but they’ll need to make some tough decisions on the others. This is probably the year for Waddell to break from his strategy and go all in. That said, even after this trade they still have all their draft picks this year (pending resolution of the conditions) and their prospect pool is smaller but doesn’t look totally depleted.

Was Guentzel the right guy for Carolina to go after? Obviously we won’t know until he plays for them, but I say yes. They’ve been wanting a goal scorer, and he was the best available, probably the only one likely to have a real impact on this already deep team. I was thinking they would go after Buchnevich because he has another year left on his contract, but for that reason he would have cost them more, and I think Guentzel is a better fit for what they need. The only negative is unless he really loves it in Carolina, I think he’ll be strictly a rental. If he wants a big 7-year contract, I don’t think Carolina will give that to somebody his age, though at least they’ll have a chance to see how well he fits in before they decide what they are willing to offer, instead of waiting to make a pitch for him as a UFA.

Now let’s look at it from Pittsburgh’s perspective. First, let’s remember that Jake Guentzel is a rental. Renting is attractive only because it costs less than buying (at least in the short term). When you trade a pending UFA, you never get back equal value, and to expect that, you would be unrealistic. People are talking like they expected Pittsburgh to get a guy who’s just as good as Jake Guentzel. That doesn't happen when you’re trading a rental.

A lot of people seem upset that they didn’t get a guaranteed first-round pick. This is a very narrow view based on us being conditioned to top tier rentals being traded for a package that almost always includes 1st-round pick, but what is that pick worth? Carolina’s 1st-round pick is #25 based on today’s standings. I think it’s too soon to judge anybody drafted in 2020 or later, so let’s look at the 5 years before that. The #25 picks those years were Jack Roslovic, Riley Tufte, Ryan Poehling, Dominik Bokk and Connor McMichael, so while some teams do find stars late in the first round (Jake Oettinger and Tage Thompson were #26 picks), you’re just as likely to get a guy who never establishes himself as an NHL player. Seems that there’s a good chance that at least one of these guys will become an NHL player, and if it’s Koivunen or Ponomarev, they’ll be there years before a 2024 1st-round pick. That’s worth a lot to Pittsburgh because they don’t want to wait until Crosby and Malkin are retired before the see any benefits from this trade. And by the way, there’s probably a 15-20% chance they’ll get that 1st-round pick that all of you think is so important anyway, in addition to these prospects.

Another thing that makes this a good trade for Pittsburgh is Michael Bunting. Don’t get me wrong – he’s no Jake Guentzel – but he’s proven he can play on the top line with elite players, so he could immediately slide into Guentzel’s spot. I would argue that even if none of the prospects and draft picks work out, it’s still a good trade for Pittsburgh because they got a replacement for Guentzel for two more years at a reasonable cap hit, and they can use the cap space they save by replacing Guentzel with Bunting to add in another area this summer.

Finally, I don’t know if there’s any chance of Guentzel going back to Pittsburgh, but if they have any designs on that, they kept that possibility open by trading him to a team that seems unlikely to sign him.
Forum: NHL SigningsJul. 12, 2022 at 11:28 p.m.