Who would have thought Tarasenko might go down?
That guy Brett Connelly that I mentioned as a UFA signing in July on our trade board might look pretty good about right now. ( 9 points in 10 games.) 5 years at $3.5M per. I thought it might take $4.5M per.
I see a thread on the big trade board "Hall's value to the Note" and what will that cost?
I asked the question back then: who is top 6 material on our team this year if we don't grab Connolly? Well let's hope Thomas is ready now. Blais is already there and Sanford is next in line.
How about one of you guys that thought the Connolly idea was wholefully wrong straighten me out here?
I don't recall any conversation about Connolly and I don't have much skin in the game one way or another.
With that said, why would Connolly have been interested in coming here? He's a natural RW and had zero chance of making the top 6 as a RW over Tarasenko or Perron. Playing him at 3RW would have required moving Thomas around, so he would have been signing on July 1 with a team who was extremely likely to slide him to his off wing right off the bat.
From the team perspective, who are you moving to fit his contract in (not just this year, but also next year and beyond)? I think Connolly is probably a better top 6 option right now than Thomas/Kyrou/Kostin/etc. But he sure as hell isn't better than any of ROR, Tarasenko, Perron, Schwartz, or Schenn, so you're not moving them to make cap space. I'll absolutely take Sunny and his contract over what it would have taken for Connolly and moving a pricier D man out to clear space would have required bringing another D in as I don't believe our internal options are capable of replacing Petro, Parayko, J-Bo or Faulk (Eddy at the time). So you are having to move Bozak or Allen to make it work. Moving Bozak creates a hole at 3C instead of wing and moving Allen this past summer would have almost certainly meant retaining salary, at which point you aren't clearing up enough space to pay for a quality backup AND bring in Connolly. Moving past this season, Connolly would block Kyrou/Kostin since we already have a bit of a logjam at RW.
So at the time, acquiring Connolly was a move we couldn't afford, at a position that was a resounding organizational strength in hopes that the player would want to accept a competition for a 3rd line role and/or playing his off wing for 4 years. An injury to Tarasenko doesn't change that.