Value of: Four Penguins Moves (CAR, MTL, OTT, TOR.)

[Jag68Sid87]

Trades:

Patric Hornqvist to CAR for Hadyn Fleury (RFA rights)

Olli Maatta to MON for Artturi Lehkonen (RFA rights)

Jack Johnson + Penguins 2020 1st Round Pick to OTT for OTT 2020 6th round pick

Tristan Jarry to TOR for Connor Brown

Leaves Penguins with $14,450,000M in cap space with a lineup of

Guentzel-Crosby-Brown
McCann-Malkin-Kessel
Lehkonen-Bjustad-Rust
Simon-X (Blueger)-X (ZAR)

Dumoulin-Letang
X (Pettersson)-Schultz
X (Fleury)-Gudbranson
X (Riikola)

Murray
DeSmith

Sign the RFAs to plug the Xs, and we should still have around say, 5M in cap space we could use for a forward and bump ZAR/Simon to the bench.

Notable RFAs include Aston-Reese, Teddy Blueger, Adam Johnson, Artturi Lehkonen, Marcus Pettersson, Russo Riikola, and Hadyn Fleury.

Yes to the first two, no to the last two. Trading Johnson is not worth trading a first rounder, in any year. And I would rather deal DeSmith. His value is high as a backup and I would like to see Jarry push Murray moving forward.

The first two moves I would do all day, any day.

 

[Liferleafer]

Jarry for Brown? Sure.

 

[bert]

You're getting a 1st though. We're going nowhere next year, so that doesn't matter, the year after...is admittedly a problem. So enticing with a 1st attached...

I like it, play the hell out of him next year and help the tank buy him out after. Keep all the young players in the minors so they can develop properly and are away from the train wreck that the sens will be next season. Thats what a team that isnt run by Eugene Melnyk would do.
Too bad the sens are run by Eugene Melnyk.

 

[Junohockeyfan]

True - but then it's a good thing that Maatta can skate, he's just not great at it, but he's certainly good enough in that dept to hold down a job. The bottom line is NHL GMs look for players who can play at this level. And Maatta can not only play at this level, but perform well above that of many of his peers when it comes to the actual results that he produces. Sure his skating is ugly and he's not going to win any awards in that dept any time soon... but how smart he is more than makes up for it.

And this is where fans and their emotions run afoul of the reality of the NHL. Its why when fans all said they'd give JJ **** and hope he's out of the NHL, there were multiple NHL GMs looking to sign him to the same sort of contract Pittsburgh gave him. It's why when Gudbranson was statistically the worst D in the NHL in his time in Vancouver, he was still someone other GMs wanted. It's why Manning and Kunitz still had jobs last fall despite being terrible the year before.

Not really. But he's been the whipping boy for a while now. Mostly because his skating blows. The fact that he's usually still really really effective doesn't seem to matter all that much. The optics are he can't skate and thus he's useless due to the system that Pittsburgh wants to play.

In reality he's a top 4D, however Pittsburgh has cap issues, and Maatta will grant the most cap space while being the easiest to replace internally while also providing us with value with his return. Rutherford is unlikely to try and trade Johnson and we have Pettersson in the other LD spot... so there's not really a need for Maatta.

Maata is not a top4 D. He was behind bottom pairing JJ in the playoffs and a heathy scratch as well. How do you explain that?

His speed is a major issue in an nhl that is getting progressively faster. I can’t see much interest in Maata unless its for a salary dump in return.

Bergevin in particular would not make the mistake of trading for Olli Maata, after his disaster with the slothful Alzner. Speed is key.

Realistically, what nhl team has a system that would accommodate Maata?

 

[elitepete]

In the one called reality.

Comedy would be a better word for it than reality.

 

[elitepete]

delete

 

[Sens of Anarchy]

Sold for Ottawa.

 

[Riptide]

Maata is not a top4 D. He was behind bottom pairing JJ in the playoffs and a heathy scratch as well. How do you explain that?

His speed is a major issue in an nhl that is getting progressively faster. I can’t see much interest in Maata unless its for a salary dump in return.

Bergevin in particular would not make the mistake of trading for Olli Maata, after his disaster with the slothful Alzner. Speed is key.

Realistically, what nhl team has a system that would accommodate Maata?

Guess we'll just have to save this post for when he's likely traded this summer.

But I will say that Maatta isn't Alzner. Alzner spent the season in the minors not because he's slow, but because he's a bad blueliner in general. And that's the key difference between the two. Maatta isn't a bad blueliner, just a slow one. But still one who's shown he can play 18/20 minutes a night and still be very effective in the NHL. And Pittsburgh won't have to take a cap dump back for him.