Porter Stoutheart
We Got Wood
- Jun 14, 2017
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To me, it's just too rare to have a top-4 as good as ours. Forget about who goes on hotter streaks or who starts a little slower than somebody, etc... yeah, Subban started this year cold again, but was a total stud later on last year. Ellis was great for a stretch after coming back last year then went cold at the wrong time. But end of the day, they are all huge assets to our team and a big reason for our success. The cool thing is we aren't in any cap trouble and don't have any kinds of pressures to move any of them (in the short term at least). So I say just keep them all, be thankful, and use other assets in trades. We're basically in the perfect rental/contender trade scenario for giving up just futures to load up.Tend to agree here. In the regular season, Subban is the one I probably have the most problem with but in the two playoff runs he's been with us, he has been nothing short of spectacular, probably our best D overall in those runs. He just delivers in the playoffs.
Ellis on the other hand, hasn't had a good year so far, disappeared offensively in the last playoff run, and -17 run got injured in the Finals. Until that he was solid, but arguably the worst of the top-4. Also, we have Fabbro coming up and Ellis leaving should persuade Fabbro a little more into joining us.
The thing is, though that we just signed Ellis to a massive contract so he's not likely to get traded.
Now if things don't pan out over the next couple years, something more along the lines of changes of scenery or maneuvering for the expansion draft or trying to figure out how to fit new Josi/Ekholm contracts WILL come up. But that ain't now. Cross those bridges when we get to them. We aren't there yet.