Rumor: AVS Proposals/Rumors/Free Agents & Related Topics 2016-17 Part XVI

[Meeqs]

I think he's overrated, but he's not bad.

Given current rumored asking prices I would guess Sakic would be looking for PLD+Murray. That is if Murray is good enough for him.

 

[Meeqs]

I like Barzal a lot so I'm not going to disagree there. It's just smart business to look at the finite amount of time someone would be under team control and how that aligns with one's organizational plan. If they get a resigning then that's a nice bonus but I'd rather operate under the known timeline one has rather than staking their plan on hopes of getting someone to stick around. This is what they have lacked, a true plan of where they want to be in 3-5 years and how to get there. It seems as if every year they operate under the "are we better next year" plan.

With the team they have inherited they didn't have much of a choice. Its pretty much been "lets do the best we can until our fixed drafting issue has enough time to come into effect" hence the short term UFA signings over the 3 years why they let their draft picks develop.

 

[JoemAvs]

Meh. Islanders are IMO the worst of all trading partners that are rumored to be interested...

Rather wait till the last second to see if one of NSH, MTL, OTT or even CBJ (after reading that Portzline tweet) blink and give us something very nice before I would settle for the Islanders pieces.

They could offer good value but IMO almost all of their pieces are poor fits with the Avalanche...

And no you won't be able to flip Hamonic for Trouba...

There is no chance in hell that happens. We would be "stuck" with Hamonic.

So unless we also have a trade lined up for one of Barrie or EJ, I don't really see the point at all.

Also IMO Hamonic is the one piece where worrying about UFA status makes actually sense after what happened last year. I know the situation has changed a bit but I think that guy will sign with WPG the moment he can. Given that we won't exactly be contenders for the next 2-3 years, trading for him IMO is not the way to go.

Rather have Pulock + Barzal + 1st and I would easily decline that deal as well right now if I were Sakic...

 

[tigervixxxen]

With the team they have inherited they didn't have much of a choice. Its pretty much been "lets do the best we can until our fixed drafting issue has enough time to come into effect" hence the short term UFA signings over the 3 years why they let their draft picks develop.

What do you mean inherited, it's their team. The same one that they created. Don't make me pull out my Sakic does not equal the entirety of the FO speech again. And how do they not have a choice to make a plan?

 

[AvsMakar08]

WPG probably wont move Trouba within the division. He would be the absolute best case scenario for the Avs though. Kid is a stud.

Kid is a stud but a little dirty at times. He is walking the line, the line between good and evil. I would not want Trouba on the same line as Z. I would separate them as far as possible.

 

[Meeqs]

What do you mean inherited, it's their team. The same one that they created. Don't make me pull out my Sakic does not equal the entirety of the FO speech again. And how do they not have a choice to make a plan?

I think fans severely underestimate how bad of a spot the Avs were in when Sakic took over.

The team essentially had 4 good centers in Stastny, RoR, Duchene and Mackinnon.

1 good winger in Gabe

2 good Dmen in Barrie and EJ

Varly and Pickard.

The Avs had no depth and more importantly 0!!! prospects in the system who were NHL level players due to Pracey missing on almost every pick he took, including half of his 1st rounders.

So the Avs had literally no NHL talent coming up to help the team, no good players in UFA and serious holes on the roster.

The draft is everything in the NHL right now and it takes 3 years minimum to fix the prospect pipeline and 5-7 if you are being realistic.

It wasn't that the Avs didn't have a plan but that they didn't have any options to make the team better. This year was more or less inevitable.

I will preface all of this by saying that they didn't do everything perfectly, and faced some growing pains in the beginning but that is to be expected. No MGMT group is perfect. However outside of some small things here and there they hit home runs with the most important aspects and are making all the moves to finally put the Avs back in a good place. Also its ironic that the Avs massive success under Roys first year most likely did more harm than good.

I will still stand by the statement that there was nothing that Sakic and Co could have done to prevent what happened this year (almost every argument here is HEAVILY influenced by hindsight bias) and that factors outside of their control contributed as well. They may be the GM but there is nothing they could have done to avoid this (realistically speaking)

As far as the plan, the main issue is that Sakics plan and Roys plan clashed, but the plans have always been there. Build through the draft, sign smart deals, and explore every avenue to make the team better.

 

[Meeqs]

Kid is a stud but a little dirty at times. He is walking the line, the line between good and evil. I would not want Trouba on the same line as Z. I would separate them as far as possible.

He is a 22 year old #1 dman with the whole package. I agree that he needs to cut out the dirty **** from his game, but that is very doable.

Outside of Lindholm I dont think you could come close to a more perfect player the Avs could get. I would move him for Duchene straight up any day of the week, even with his pain in the ass agent.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

Trouba is fine the way he is.... as long as it's not a clear intent to injure type plays being dirty isn't all that bad. It's why Pronger was such a beast. Yeah, a ****ing ******* but you need those types.

 

[The Abusement Park]

Kid is a stud but a little dirty at times. He is walking the line, the line between good and evil. I would not want Trouba on the same line as Z. I would separate them as far as possible.

I think that slight dirtiness in a defenders game is actually a good thing. Not slew footing people or spearing people, but those little slashes, pokes, prods, and all that stuff is really good at getting under people's skin. I think walking the line is fine and I'll bet every top Dman does stuff like that.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

Meh. Islanders are IMO the worst of all trading partners that are rumored to be interested...

Ottawa is a lot worse so, is CBJ.

 

[JoemAvs]

Ottawa is a lot worse so, is CBJ.

Yeah?

Ottawa could put Chabot on the table and I personally prefer White to Barzal tbh for the Avs atleast(probably alone in that one but eh).

CBJ could put together one hell of a deal if they wanted to between Murray, PLD, Bjorkstrand...


Islanders really aren't even close when it comes to potential deals.

Of course Chabot and PLD are probably off the table but If I am Sakic, I don't make a deal like that if they are anyways...

 

[Meeqs]

Ottawa is a lot worse so, is CBJ.

Imo it goes Car>Mtl=NYI=CBJ>Ott>Nsh

If we assume Trouba wont happen, the Car has the 2 best centerpieces in Hanifin and Slavin and Faulk may possibly be the 3rd best D option. The deal would most likely just happen at the draft which is probably the main reason that the Avs will wait until then.

MTL, NYI and CBJ all have what it would take to make a move happen but all the packages would be different, with different risks and benefits.

OTT was never going to pay what it would take and was most likely just there to put pressure on MTL and maybe Bos.

Trading Duchene within the Division to a team that he would easily resign with is lunacy, especially consider there is nothing special at all about their package.

 

[Mighty Makar]

We had Adam Foote on this team for years. He was a pain in the ass to play against. You need those types of players.

 

[Meeqs]

Trouba is fine the way he is.... as long as it's not a clear intent to injure type plays being dirty isn't all that bad. It's why Pronger was such a beast. Yeah, a ****ing ******* but you need those types.

He is too good of a player to be purposefully elbowing players in the head. You can be physical without being dirty and a player is no good to a team when he is sitting out due to a suspension.

Also Pronger played in a very different era than we see today. What is important is that they were GOOD players, not that they were dirty. Aim to be a Hedman, not a Pronger.

 

[AvsMakar08]

Id hope we don't move the defenseman we get in a Duchene trade for another forward, kind of defeats the purpose of moving a core player for defense lol.

Garth said it himself that if we don't do anything, Isles are risking to put themselves in the corner and not making a "trade" today or in the near future, they could loose Tavares to UFA. Not exactly his words but very similar.
Avs are trading great assets for more assets. If Avs trade with Isles get Mathew Barzal, 1st and Hamonic by trading Dutchy, we still get two top prospects in Barzal who will be possibly soon a top six forward and 1st overall and trade Hamonic for Trouba. Getting someone like Trouba on this team would make me think that we will not be drafting any lower then 10 any time soon.

 

[McMetal]

I think fans severely underestimate how bad of a spot the Avs were in when Sakic took over.

The team essentially had 4 good centers in Stastny, RoR, Duchene and Mackinnon.

1 good winger in Gabe

2 good Dmen in Barrie and EJ

Varly and Pickard.

The Avs had no depth and more importantly 0!!! prospects in the system who were NHL level players due to Pracey missing on almost every pick he took, including half of his 1st rounders.

So the Avs had literally no NHL talent coming up to help the team, no good players in UFA and serious holes on the roster.

The draft is everything in the NHL right now and it takes 3 years minimum to fix the prospect pipeline and 5-7 if you are being realistic.

It wasn't that the Avs didn't have a plan but that they didn't have any options to make the team better. This year was more or less inevitable.

I will preface all of this by saying that they didn't do everything perfectly, and faced some growing pains in the beginning but that is to be expected. No MGMT group is perfect. However outside of some small things here and there they hit home runs with the most important aspects and are making all the moves to finally put the Avs back in a good place. Also its ironic that the Avs massive success under Roys first year most likely did more harm than good.

I will still stand by the statement that there was nothing that Sakic and Co could have done to prevent what happened this year (almost every argument here is HEAVILY influenced by hindsight bias) and that factors outside of their control contributed as well. They may be the GM but there is nothing they could have done to avoid this (realistically speaking)

As far as the plan, the main issue is that Sakics plan and Roys plan clashed, but the plans have always been there. Build through the draft, sign smart deals, and explore every avenue to make the team better.

I mean, in hindsight, yes, there are plenty of things that could have been done. But I do agree that they had logical reasons for every step they made that made sense at the time. A super young team gets bounced in the first round? Balance it out with some playoff experience. Johnson needs a reliable partner on the top pair? Do what it takes to acquire a top pair anchor in free agency. Depth is a problem? Try to acquire a bunch of cheap depth and hope for a couple of them to have bounceback years to tide you over until your homegrown depth can filter in. All of that made sense at the time.

If those moves that everyone is raging about DON'T get made, then we probably have a season like this in 14-15 or 15-16. No Iginla in '14? We have a gigantic hole in the top 6 that leaves us way worse in the standings. No Beauchemin in '15? Nick Holden is our top LHD, we would have been way worse. Now this year, he strikes out on all but one of his free agency bargain bins and loses his best defenseman early, and it finally all comes crashing down. If one of Tyutin, Wiercioch, or Gelinas make good on their second chance, then maybe we don't look so bad this year. It could have worked, it didn't.

 

[JoemAvs]

Garth said it himself that if we don't do anything, Isles are risking to put themselves in the corner and not making a "trade" today or in the near future, they could loose Tavares to UFA. Not exactly his words but very similar.
Avs are trading great assets for more assets. If Avs trade with Isles get Mathew Barzal, 1st and Hamonic by trading Dutchy, we still get two top prospects in Barzal who will be possibly soon a top six forward and 1st overall and trade Hamonic for Trouba. Getting someone like Trouba on this team would make me think that we will not be drafting any lower then 10 any time soon.

Pretty sure WPG would not trade Trouba straight up for Duchene right now (I would do that by the way)

There is no chance in hell they trade him for Hamonic. None.

That pipedream has to die. If we trade for Hamonic we are "stuck" with him...

 

[CalderKing21]

Wonder if there's a bit of an arms race coming in the east. Washington just made a statement - do teams like the Pens and Jackets try to match?

There has to be after the Caps acquisition. That was a huge gauntlet they threw down.

 

[AvsMakar08]

We had Adam Foote on this team for years. He was a pain in the ass to play against. You need those types of players.

To tell you the truth. It would be a masterpiece for Sakic to pull off a trade with Isles that involved Dutchy for 1st, Barzal and Hamonic and then being able to flip Hamonic for Trouba. It would be a trade of a century, especially if Avs get rid of their dead weight contracts, players for picks or prospects.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

Yeah?

Ottawa could put Chabot on the table and I personally prefer White to Barzal tbh for the Avs atleast(probably alone in that one but eh).

CBJ could put together one hell of a deal if they wanted to between Murray, PLD, Bjorkstrand...


Islanders really aren't even close when it comes to potential deals.

Of course Chabot and PLD are probably off the table but If I am Sakic, I don't make a deal like that if they are anyways...

Hamonic is a proven legit top pairing guy...plus they have that AHL defender who's pretty hyped. Mix that with Duchene's clone and it blows Ottawa out of the park.

Although, I'm just sick of seeing Ceci's name. It's almost as bad as Kulikov for Duchene but this time avs fans were a little brighter.

Imo it goes Car>Mtl=NYI=CBJ>Ott>Nsh

If we assume Trouba wont happen, the Car has the 2 best centerpieces in Hanifin and Slavin and Faulk may possibly be the 3rd best D option. The deal would most likely just happen at the draft which is probably the main reason that the Avs will wait until then.

MTL, NYI and CBJ all have what it would take to make a move happen but all the packages would be different, with different risks and benefits.

OTT was never going to pay what it would take and was most likely just there to put pressure on MTL and maybe Bos.

Trading Duchene within the Division to a team that he would easily resign with is lunacy, especially consider there is nothing special at all about their package.

I'd agree with this more or less.

He is too good of a player to be purposefully elbowing players in the head. You can be physical without being dirty and a player is no good to a team when he is sitting out due to a suspension.

Also Pronger played in a very different era than we see today. What is important is that they were GOOD players, not that they were dirty. Aim to be a Hedman, not a Pronger.

Pronged might have played in a different era but superstars still get better treatment. Being nasty is a good thing especially for a defender. You take Pronger over Hedman every day of the week.

 

[mapletreemarty]

Trouba is fine the way he is.... as long as it's not a clear intent to injure type plays being dirty isn't all that bad. It's why Pronger was such a beast. Yeah, a ****ing ******* but you need those types.

Let him play the game, you don't want to interfere too much and have him turn into Dion 2.0

That's what happened in Calgary after his 3rd year... management sat Phaneuf down and told him he's gotta stay out of the box (182 PIM in 07-08) he's too valuable to the team and they needed him on the ice. Phaneuf took that as him to be less aggressive. He was never the same player and/or nearly as effective as he was those first three years in the league.

 

[The Kingslayer]

Trouba is fine the way he is.... as long as it's not a clear intent to injure type plays being dirty isn't all that bad. It's why Pronger was such a beast. Yeah, a ****ing ******* but you need those types.

Agreed. I wouldnt change much about Trouba. I like the dirty stuff he does because its right on the line. He does alot of sneaky **** out there kinda like Chelios used to do. We need more *******s like that.

 

[Duchene2MacKinnon]

Nah that's not what happened to Phanuef. What happened to Dion was that refs relaxed on clutching and grabbing meaning less PP time which resulted in less point for Dion. His defence was always erratic people were just blinded by the fact a young defender that had amazing open ice hits (which means good defence to a lot of people) and put up a lot of points/goals.

In reality him being as dumb as rocks was always the case and his terrible positioning.

 

[Meeqs]

I mean, in hindsight, yes, there are plenty of things that could have been done. But I do agree that they had logical reasons for every step they made that made sense at the time. A super young team gets bounced in the first round? Balance it out with some playoff experience. Johnson needs a reliable partner on the top pair? Do what it takes to acquire a top pair anchor in free agency. Depth is a problem? Try to acquire a bunch of cheap depth and hope for a couple of them to have bounceback years to tide you over until your homegrown depth can filter in. All of that made sense at the time.

If those moves that everyone is raging about DON'T get made, then we probably have a season like this in 14-15 or 15-16. No Iginla in '14? We have a gigantic hole in the top 6 that leaves us way worse in the standings. No Beauchemin in '15? Nick Holden is our top LHD, we would have been way worse. Now this year, he strikes out on all but one of his free agency bargain bins and loses his best defenseman early, and it finally all comes crashing down. If one of Tyutin, Wiercioch, or Gelinas make good on their second chance, then maybe we don't look so bad this year. It could have worked, it didn't.

Avs have all most likely thought to themselves at one point "why aren't we ever able to get the few good players we have any decent partners? Why is Duchene always with 4th liners and why are EJ and Barrie with Hejda and Guenin?" but never put together it was because Pracey was unable to draft any depth players to play with them.

Instead of Bleakley we could have Pasternak. Hishon could have been Bjustad, Kuznetsov, Coyle. Siemens could have been Beaulieu, or Klefbom.

I know that's unrealistic but my point being, people assume that if you are bad for a season you get better young players but in reality it just gives you more options. For every pick you miss not only does it set you back 1 high end player but other teams who draft well get that much better that you so it is 2 fold.

Its one thing to have few good prospects but to have absolutely none AND have a bad roster is absurd incompetence and in the NHL it takes 5-7 years to fix that.

So 1st Sakic HAD to fix the drafting, which he did immediately and has done a **** ton of work on which he doesn't get the credit he deserves for doing. However until that starts to kick in (about right now) the only choices he had was old bad players in UFA and getting players through trade. Its hard to say he hasn't done the best he can in both.

The thing for me though was there no clear or realistic choice he could have made that would have changed anything this season, which is the point I want to make. So many fans ignorantly blame him assuming there were magical options he simply didn't try that would have made the Avs good this year. Which if you look at his track record he has CLEARLY tried every avenue he could have.

Even the bad deals he made were, 1)early in his tenure, 2) had a clear reasoning behind them and 3) none were large or detrimental, 4) most importantly, he clearly learned from them.

 

[PAZ]

MTL/CAR are ideal trade partners, but my third favorite is CBJ unless Chabot/McAvoy are on the table (doubt they are). Murray is still only 23, and while he hasn't had the trajectory most people would like the potential is there. If we could snag PLD + 1st/prospect that would be a really nice package, and Columbus has excess prospects and depth to make it happen.