Weekes: Senators willing to trade high pick or prospect to dump Nikita Zaitsev's contract

[DudeWhereIsMakar]

I don't see why not take Karlsson's contract back to Zaitsev and potentially other things.

 

[mouser]

It’s not 2 seasons. It’s the rest of this season plus one more.

From the trade deadline he will be owed ~$5m total, or ~$4.1m if bought out.

Ideal trade partner imo would be a team looking to move on an expensive pending UFA so they can free up some space this year, with a plan to buyout Zaitsev. E.g. Quick.

Purely from a financial PoV either of these two work. No idea whether LA would do it though.

- trade Zaitsev for Quick + Walker
- LA buyout Zaitsev
- LA frees up ~$2m in cap space between deadline and end of the season
- Cap change next season is negligible ($150k)

or

- trade Zaitsev (retain 1/3) for Quick
- LA buyout Zaitsev
- LA frees up ~$3m in cap space between the deadline and end of the season
- LA takes $1.9m cap hit next season

…or trade Walker and have Ottawa retain on Zaitsev. That frees up another $600k this season and $2.65m next season.

An extra $2-3.5m in post-deadline cap space would be pretty powerful. E.g. $3m would be enough for Chychrun (no retention) + Kane (50% retained).

Ditto for Calgary with Lucic (though he has NTC).

The flaw here is if LA wants to dump Quick for cap space it’s because they want to add players at the deadline.

Would be much easier to simply throw Quick into any deadline trade acquisition as an expiring contract. At the TDL Quick will have $540K in salary remaining. The typical market cost for that much dead salary is a 3rd round pick.

Zaitsev at the TDL plus a buyout is $4.2m in salary remaining. Plus a buyout cap hit going on two more seasons. The typical market rate for that is a 1st round pick.

Zaitsev’s contract has significantly more negative value than Quick’s.

 

[biturbo19]

The idea of grabbing a high pick or good prospect should definitely have the Canucks interested. If they're serious about trading away and not re-signing Horvat as one of their best and most important players, they may as well use that cap space to try to accumulate some futures assets of some sort.


Heck, assuming Schenn is also gone at the deadline, i'd even give Zaitsev a little bit of a run out with Hughes as a RHD, see if you can't rehabilitate Zaitsev's reputation a little tiny bit. Someone's gonna have to play those minutes down the stretch...and worst case, it just helps "the tank" for the remainder of the season.


Hate to take on more dead weight on the cap for next year, but it is what it is. If they're losing Horvat, i'm not sure it's realistic to expect them to compete anyway.


Would someone like JBD be on the table in this sort of deal to unload Zaitsev? That definitely seems like the kind of thing that would make it worthwhile to take on. Would also really fit with the Canucks alleged priority in looking for U24 players over picks.

 

[The Devilish Buffoon]

We will get a new coach, new GM, new owners. They will most likely take next year as a do-over: new coach, healthy lineup, all a year older. Small progress will be made and then we will head into the offseason with lots of cap flexibility and a better idea of our core-adjacent pieces. That's when we will make our next big move.

That's my guess.

With how this season has gone, the urgency to dump Zaitsev is a lot less.

 

[Nac Mac Feegle]

Protected '24, goes to '25. Sometime by then you should be playoff team. Send have lots young talent

No. Waste of resources for Ottawa to do that.