Despres could. Despres has done something Maatta never has... successfully play top-4 minutes in the playoffs.
Maatta succeeded on a top pairing on an Olympic medalist at 19, where the level of play is considerably higher than the NHL playoffs. If you put team USA in the Western conference playoffs, they'd go 16-0 even with Bylsma calling the shots. Maatta was first pairing on a team that destroyed them.
For a small stretch of time. So was Paul Martin for a longer stretch of time. You'd balk at trading a young Martin for Kessel?
I get it. Trading Maatta is an extremely tough pill to swallow. He could be an elite D-men for the next decade+. But Kessel IS an elite RW, right now. Second only to Ovy the last few years in terms of shot generation and goals.
It sounds like we'll be waiting until Wednesday anyway to see where the asking price ends up with Kessel. I'd much prefer using DP or KK as the the trade piece. But I'm not going to make silly claims like that trade will doom us. We're a better team the next few years with Kessel than Maatta. The trade off is after that.
There's no way. No way. There's a 7 million cap hit difference between the two, so Kessel gives you less opportunity to build depth through the lineup. That's potentially two quality players.
On Maatta's bridge deal, it's still going to be a difference of about 4 million. That's Maatta and Oshie for the same cap allocation as just Kessel. Kessel's better than Oshie, but he is nowhere near better than both of these players combined. Plus, you don't have to have Dumoulin or Harrington or freaking Gonchar on the first pair.
And this isn't even factoring in that Maatta was playing like a 1D until he hurt his shoulder. Kessel is a wing. The only wings that are as important as a 1D are Ovechkin, Kane and maybe Benn. Kessel's good, but he ain't them.
If we trade Maatta for Kessel we get worse in the short term. We get
ridiculously worse in the long term. The only way this works out for us is if Maatta drops dead after the trade.
When a 20 year old plays as well as a 10 year vet as his absolute peak, the younger player isn't a younger version of the older one. He's already as good and primed to be much better.
Maatta will be making a pittance compared to Kessel to boot. So you don't compare Kessel and Maatta one for one, you compare Kessel and Maatta plus a ton of extra cap space.
Maatta shouldn't be dealt. Period.
I don't agree with you on a lot, but we're on the exact same wavelength on this one.