Quite honestly there is enough things that went completely off the rails this year that there really is not much a reason to speculate on what exactly did happen with his game specifically. Ultimately, the Isles need to continue to play him in a way that improves his and the collective team's success. This improves the team and his value.
Ultimately, I still believe that Palmieri (given time with Barzal and first unit PP time) can be a 20-25 goal scorer next year. Followed by increasingly diminished returns until his contract ends (20G then 15G). But hopefully by then Wahlstom is moving up the lineup as Palmieri is moving down.
As for him being traded, he has a NTC until the end of next year. The only possible trade that I could see for him THIS deadline and/or offseason is to Boston.
I believe Boston has had past interest in him. I also vaguely recall hearing he has ties to Boston (Wife perhaps?). They also have players like Craig Smith and John Moore (currently their Thomas Hickey) who would offset the cap hit. Isles would be on the hook for those two players for another year.
Yeah not my intent, I don't want to speculate. I listen to Spittin Chiclets regularly and it gave me an appreciation of learning players in the past, they'll give details of what went wrong. Sometimes it's they got the contract, sometimes it's injuries and not being able to recover and sometimes it's mental , front office, whatever.
Obviously we know publicly he had a kid and the direct stat line since and before is clear.
But the trade part came from Twitter, I think Nichols who I just bashed in another thread. Just serving some talking points.
My bottom line is we signed him, I like his game, I hope he has a great second half to piggyback on for the next season.
Need something positive to talk about!