Although the risk of EK not extending is real and that forces a trade -- no doing a Garth Snow and letting Tavares potentially walk for nothing is an unacceptable parallel esp for Ott. -- the OP offer is way too small.
What was overlooked is extreme degree of competitive bidding for EK.
Nearly every team in the league will bid for that year.
Sure, the fact that it is only a year suppresses the price as opposed to an existing multi-year deal [see McDonagh as exhibit], but it is still a significant price.
Even if that trade were at last minute of final deadline possible, i.e., for half a year of EK as opposed to a full year, he would get more than equiv of OP.
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Once you get EK, you need to extend him. However, this guy is not 22-23 and while not extremely beat up has his battle scars and injuries. Risk of losing his foot speed after a few years is not smart for 6-7 year deal.
Solution:
clear cap space over 1 year,
- something around Zib+Andersson + Buch + Georgeiv
for
2OA + Hanifin rfa rights + cap dump Darling + RD McKeown
- then after Benny Allaire works his goalie guru magic, flip Darling for futures
- trade Smith
- Staal's nmc morphs into partial ntic, trade and move on
- get through Seattle expansion draft if applicable
now with end of year, EK is a UFA unless he opted to not test the market.
See if he'll work with you.
EK thought to be around 10m ish per year on long term
with above cap recovered, offer him $13.5 for 3 seasons only
no nmc
reasonable ntc restrictions
enjoy EK
if a team like Bruins, Leafs etc offers significant enough return, let him go
Let them take on balance of trade, and deal with any issues past that about extending or not. Also a win for Karlsson cause he got his upfront, and if he manages to be injury free and show he can still cut the mustard, his final contract may remain in the 8-10 range, depending on term and other factors.
- profit.
only that scenario or similar works for NYR
