If we didn’t have that $14-15M in dead cap, I don’t think Fiala would have been traded. Guerin did make the wrong choice in keeping Zucc and trading Fiala. But those moves were largely forced by cutting out negative impact players (Parise, Suter). It’s been said before that buying out those two allowed the Wild to have another year of Fiala. When they were bought out it opened up something like $10-11M in cap space.
One could argue, and it may be a bit premature, that Faber for Fiala as a near even swap.
Pretty sure the best player in franchise history has more to do with that.
That's what I'm saying. When they cut Suter/Parise out they were killing two birds with one stone. Got rid of poor locker room personalities and players trending towards being fringe NHL players.
Fiala wasn't traded because he was a locker room problem. Do people seriously have revisionist history on this?
Not to be pedantic, but those should be "or's" not "and's". The cap hit doesn't occur over and over for each player you could apply it to, it happens once. Your overall point is good, though, that the defense is more expensive with Suter off it than on it.
I should have been clearer in my meaning than just saying "math". What I meant was that if that recapture penalty happened with the Wild at the cap ceiling, how would they get cap compliant in short order? It wouldn't just be giving good players away for Future Considerations, it would likely require us paying draft picks and prospects to get teams to take our good players for Future Considerations.
This is the train of thought of people who have never worked in a team and think that numbers are the end all be all. People are a lot more complex than that.
The more I thought about this, the more I realized you're right. The only issue would have been if we'd traded them and they'd retired, which almost happened with Parise to the Islanders (minus the retirement part) so I'm not sure Guerin wouldn't have done a move like that eventually.
Maroon doesn’t do yoga, he goes to war alongside his teammates. That’s the mindset he brings into the locker room and folks really buy in to it.
Yeah, they bought into it with Reaves, too. That's sort of the point of our consternation here, he's more of the same. Until other major parts of the team get fixed, a guy like Maroon does nothing to help the Wild, for all his grit and locker room presence. It's like hiring Tony Robbins to encourage the workers at Nikola Motor.
I totally get the sentiment but Reaver ain’t got 3 Cups in a row or the charisma that Pat has. Folks in a locker room look at you differently when you roll in coming off those and pretty recently. Huge difference between the two guys character-wise and “accomplishment-wise” and I absolutely love Reaves.
