I'm working on something that I've wanted to do for a long time. I was hoping I'd have a job by now and somebody would *pay* me to do this, but alas, it wasn't in the cards. I've put a lot of work into this already, and I just want to verify some of my thinking by asking team boards.
If you wouldn't mind, I could use your help. For the purposes of this exercise, please consider all the players *currently* on your team, including on IR. Don't consider top picks or hot prospects in Europe or the AHL, unless they have considerable time in the NHL (around 30 games or so?) and have established a fairly tight range of value. I also don't care if a player is quote-unquote untouchable or not. Gretzky got traded, blah, blah, blah.
Also for the purposes of this thingy, everything counts. Age counts, talent counts, contract counts.
My question is this: if you were the GM of *another* team and you could trade for any player on *your* team, who would you trade for? Who are the top handful (please don't go past 8 or so) in trade value? So at the end of the day, if you look at your list, you should be able to say, "As a fan of this team, I'd hate to trade the guy at No. 3, but I'd hate to trade the guy at No. 2 more, and I'd hate to trade the guy at No. 2, but I'd hate to trade the guy at No. 1 the most."
I've taken a shot at answering below, including tiers, and age, salary, contract length. Please let me know where I'm wrong. Thanks!
1. David Pastrnak, 22, $6.66m, 2023
2. Brad Marchand, 30, $6.125m, 2025
3. Patrice Bergeron, 33, $6.875m, 2022
4. Charlie McAvoy, 21, $917k, 2019
5. Torey Krug, 27, $5.25m, 2020
6. Jake DeBrusk, 22, $863k, 2020
7. Danton Heinen, 23, $873k, 2019
8. Matt Grzelcyk, 25, $1.4m, 2020