- Dec 20, 2018
- 21,990
- 47,795
I don’t know if Arizona is actually giving away a player they just scrambled to pay a 5m bonus to and who’s only owed 1m in salary. If the Coyotes are looking to move players then cap space doesn’t matter to them either at this point, they care about the value of the return or the savings in actual salary. If trading Kessel doesn’t do much in either department and trading some else does then they will likely trade the other player. They might retain the make his cap hit more palatable to other teams.I'm definitely not giving up anything of value for him, and since most of his cap hit is air anyway it wouldn't really impact an internal budget, so I'm not opposed to bringing him on for this year and next at a very low cost if Arizona is basically just giving him away, but he's probably not getting a ton of rope 5 on 5. He's mostly a power play guy at this point, I think.
That being said, I'd have concerns regarding the personality...that seems to be a thing, and I don't know enough about him or that to really say for sure how big of a deal that is.
Sure dumping him now will save them money next season but 1) presumably things will be more normal and who’s worrying about 2021-22 now when everything’s on fire 2) a bunch of UFAs will be off their books 3) they can potentially get a big return for him at the TDL this season or the next by retaining.
And in terms of having him on our team 1) who knows how fast his decline is 2) he’s a defensive liability that gets sheltered minutes 3) we’d back at spending assets to get temporary forward help that’s flipped in a year and half and his return could be sabotaged by injury, decline etc. 4) Yuck.