Going back to your 0.001% comment which I weirdly latched on, one thing I've always wondered is why NHL fans seemingly have an absurdly low hit rate on trade proposals. HF alone probably churns something like 1000 proposals a year, right? Getting a concept within 80% accuracy of a real trade has got to be close to that super low percentage, right? There's that saying that a thousand monkeys smacking typewriters at random for thousands of years should in theory randomly type Shakespeare or something, right? But HF has quite a few attempts at trade concepts that aren't pure random slapping at a keyboard. There's significant attempts to find ideas that work for both sides and the vast majority of those do not come to fruition. Even when a player wants out, it seems to me that the accuracy of the vast majority of fans getting the 1 of 30 teams correct is embarrassingly low. Then obviously even lower for those getting remotely close to the right combo of assets (if the value of those individuals are basically zero).
But, why is it so low? We've gotta be talking like less than 1% of educated guesses are even close to being the real trades with real explanations that many fans could kinda agree upon. Furthermore, in instances where fans get close, it's like the tip of the iceberg slamming onto the deck of the Titanic once it has already run into the iceberg.
That's what I've been poking around lately big picture wise. Fundamentally, somehow hockey fans are seemingly reading everything about trades incorrectly. Yes, you look at your team roster, where you want to go with it and then positions required and then you try and acquire some of those types of players. Beyond that, somehow the vast majority of hockey fans have it completely wrong at a fundamental level. That's seemingly why we're always blown away and surprised by the details of the vast majority of these deals. Everyone thinks we should just consummate Virtanen for Bennett already. But will it actually come true? I bet the vast majority of Albertans thought that the Lucic/Neal trade was impossible months prior to it actually happening.
I've been poking at some of the interconference trades with covid quarantine and expansion draft implications. Treliving is not scared of trading interconference and thus I wondered if he'd take that easy route to sop up the premium plus also sop up extra due to less quarantine. I've also been poking at Treliving's MO for loving RFA and buying at a discount so he can add his own value via negotiation which is why the Laine/Petterson names popped up more for me. We also seem to know that Treliving doesn't often over pay. I know someone will point out that we overpaid for Hamonic. But there was an article I read that said Treliving was working that deal for over a year. He only pulled the trigger because it was a price he was comfortable at at that time. Beyond that, I'm not even sure if I'm on the right path in terms of trying to get into Treliving's head and think like he would/predict what he would do.
Fantasy: Potential restricted free agents in 2021
Reinhart and Kyrou feels like others that might be high on Treliving's list to try and see if he can loosen these guys to see if he can attempt to pry them free vs sit around thinking that those guys are straight up unavailable. We know Treliving is always asking around and in the middle of everything. If all GMs were ranked on their rejection game, Treliving likely has a high score. While some of you guys may consider that as evidence that he is a failure because he should be measured by the deals he wins, not the ones he was ins on... IMO, I think it's an indication that with Tre, anything can happen. None of Treliving's moves have ever looked to be anything less than an attempt at a step forward to me. There's occasionally questions whether we're stepping in the right direction, but it's never seemingly in doubt that it's a bigger step away from our origin and a step closer to our destination. The problem is that with some of the pieces he acquired, we ended up flying to Anmore, BC in the same ish duration of time vs driving to Canmore, AB.
Tre has tried consistently to insulate this core. But if this core is proving this year to not be one worth insulating, I have no doubt that he will again consider overhauling literally close to half our roster (ie: 10+ roster players) by the time the Seattle expansion draft is over. When Treliving is pure business, he's pure business. IMO, that's the exciting stuff. From the Flames perspective, we basically know that no one is safe. Flames are completely open for business depending on price. I would not be surprised to see several big moves at the TDL and several bigger moves prior to ED. Treliving is in an all or nothing situation. I doubt he stands pat.