Porter Stoutheart
We Got Wood
- Jun 14, 2017
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I think it will be pretty easy to determine before July 21 what the likelihood is of Seattle taking Johansen. Today, his stats line is the same as Erik Haula's, and Haula is a guy any team in the NHL will be able to sign to a short-team deal under $3M. And that's with more opportunity and better linemates for Johansen. Last year Johansen's production wasn't much different than Nick Bonino and Kyle Turris. Not said to knock Johansen per se, but just to illustrate what the optics might be from an external perspective.I actually like Joey. It would annoy me if we exposed both and Seattle took Joey. I think the Preds become worse in that scenario vs if Duchene gets picked up. So my preference if the math works is to protect Joey and expose Duchene. Who knows, maybe they’ll take him.
Of course, just as we don't look completely at a player's stats line, neither will Seattle. But at the same time, Poile as he noted in the presser, is constantly talking to all 31 other GMs, has gathered a firm sense of what he perceives his players' values to be around the league, and I'm sure he'll just keep on gathering that intelligence. And our group will do their homework very diligently on simulating the ED, considering the various permutations and combinations and cap implications of Seattle's options from all angles in terms of sanity-checking that intelligence.
If you do all that legwork and end up being 90% confident that Seattle won't take him, then I don't see the point in protecting him just for the heck of it. I like Joey too, but if I'm almost certain he's not going to be taken, I'm down with rolling the dice and protecting a different forward instead. As Pd24 says above, the worst thing if you lose the dice roll is that we're left with Duchene-Granlund as our #1/2 centers, and maybe the door opens more to bringing Tomasino back to center sooner too. It's a very low-risk gamble.