The expansion draft complicates things - it is clear Seattle was going to select Leddy as they favored d men in the ED. Lou was able to get value in a 2021 2nd (52 OA), which turned out to be (Raty) AND That allowed them to trade '21 2nd (60 OA) with another '22 2nd to jettison the Ladd contract with a clear conscience.
We don't know if Seattle would have taken Leddy. We all just figured they would.
And the Ladd deal could have been made without the Leddy deal taking place. None of the assets in the Leddy deal were used to make the Ladd deal.
Also, it pushed Seattle to take Eberle, who Lou tried to trade, but in the end, could not find a trade partner, or else he would have made a deal.
Wrote some writers.
There were less expensive players of ours for Seattle to choose from, most with shorter terms. Eberle appears to have been their personal desire.
So to label this as asset mismanagement is not entirely accurate
I didn't call any of that mismanagement.
I wrote this:
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Well presented.
If we moved Leddy for a 2nd so as to move our 22 1st to replace Leddy, that's a high degree of asset management failure.
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Which brings us to...
And to RDC's point - YES, it also depends on the acquired player... for example, if it is Hampus Lindholm for a package centered around the '22 1st... say an additional '23 2nd plus a prospect like Bellows or Wilde.
I'll tell you who is not the stud you think he is: Lindholm.
And the guy certainly isn't as good as Leddy, despite whatever advantages his being 4 years younger right now would seem to give him. His upward curve dried up real quick and scratching 30 points became his ceiling while his all-round game regularly features more breakdowns than desired.
I think you need to look into him a bit more.
Moving our 22 1st would not be wise unless it's for a considerable and highly affordable upgrade with term. I suspect that the NYI will keep this asset in their back pocket for the trade deadline.
Why does it have to be at a lower cost? Leddy was jettisoned for expansion draft purposes - mainly.
Ah, and now we get to the crux of the misconceptions. Hope
@Richie Daggers Crime is also paying attention...
If we didn't move Leddy and then Ladd and then have Eberle picked, the ONLY thing we'd have been able to do - sans further trades - this offseason was MAYBE re-sign our three big RFAs. That's it. That's all the cap allowed.
And that was while we were thinking that Pelech was gonna be getting 5-6 MM per with his new contract. We may be wrong about that now...
Any improvement or retaining of our own UFAs meant Leddy was being moved, expansion draft or not. He was basically out the second Game 7 ended, expansion draft or not.
We HAD to get rid of several of our 5+ MM players in order to even entertain re-signing Cizikas and Palmieri (in addition to our RFAs), much less adding other players from the outside. And Leddy was one of, if not the, most marketable of any of our (non-core) 5+ MM players.
The way things have gone down, we're one of the league's biggest benficiaries of the expansion draft, because Seattle actually took one of those 5+ MM players off our hands and we didn't even have to pay them to do it.
So for anyone who thinks Leddy is still on this team right now if there's no expansion draft, you're doing yourself a grave disservice.
We needed cap space one way or another - I repeat, one way or another - and outside of the core of the team moving forward (for argument's sake, let's say that core is the 10 guys we protected), Leddy was one of the absolute most moveable.
Now, if we had no cap concerns AND there was no expansion draft, sure, I don't see why the team would have moved him.
Now that THAT is cleared up...
There are creative ways to jettison Hickey and Leo and one way would be taking a page out of Tampa's playbook and trade for Kesler.
We'd all like to think so. Will Lou find them?
We already mentioned things like moving them in a play to pick up Calvin de Haan.
But does Lou even want to move them and their contracts?
Well, Bridgeport just announced the (re-)signing of six players.
There's plenty of time until camp opens up.
I think we all agree that everything we've seen in Lou's time here means were not going into camp with Hickey, Aho, Bolduc, and Salo battling things out for a spot of the left defensive side.
Some other solution will be found.
For now, all eyes on Pelech.