Sweatred
Erase me
- Jan 28, 2019
- 13,408
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It's pretty absurd to compare a team dead last in the standings and a team that is in the playoff hunt choosing whether or not to risk losing pending UFA for nothing or trade them at the deadline. Apples vs oranges here. The goal of the league isn't to maximize returns on assets, it's to win, Toronto, Winnepeg, Clb, and even the NYI had weigh the pros and cons, there was a benefit to keeping those guys around for the extra 20ish days + playoffs, we did not, our fate was sealed and no benefit would come from us keeping them around once it was clear we couldn't re-sign them.
I’m not sure about “absurd”... clearly we had no need for the players down the stretch. There were probably about 20+ teams at the deadline in contention for a playoff spot and only one wins the cup - so automatically keeping and losing your FA’s probably isn’t the best path to win a cup either for some teams. Columbus went all in for nothing. Vegas at least resigned Stone. Winnipeg lost a lot and may have lost years of their contending window.
We haven’t really seen teams give away a UFA in contention for the sake of acquiring assets for future years. The sens have a hard time acquiring UFA’s which puts them at a disadvantage vs teams like Toronto that could let JVR walk while signing JT.
The sens need something to make up for the net talent loss they experience in UFA. It’s hasn’t come from drafting recently so it may need to come form shaving off decent players before they hit UFA.