To hell with it! Stars and Canucks have a trade to announce.
This has been brewing for a long time now. Im aware my team lacked top forwards, and with Weber, Pietrangelo, Visnovsky, OEL, Garrison and Zidlicky it was time to move one.
Jason Spezza
Brendan Smith
Alex Pietrangelo
Mark McNeill
We feel like Spezza's big season will carry over this year, with another year of development by the youth that surrounds him. Spezza strengthens an offense filled to the brim with multi-cat guys but not many big producers. Grabbing a young D in Smith is huge too as we expect him to put up 80+ PIMs this year along with some points.
Moving Pietrangelo over any of the D on my roster was probably the toughest choice, but the fact of the matter is Weber is undervalued since Suter's departure, Visnovsky is coming off an off year, and OEL hasn't quite broke through yet. Pietrangelo's age and sky-high ceiling meant he was the one that had to go if I wanted to get back a respectable return that would help my offense.
I'm hoping OEL is ready to fill in, and have a Yandle-lite offensive campaign, filling the shoes of Pietrangelo on my D. Brendan Smith and Jeff Petry will battle for starts, and I think both bring something to the table.
This puts me right at the brim for salary, but consider Gionta and his 5M dropped and we're only about 600k over opening night salary cap.