Proposal: Stetcher to Nashville

[Canuck Luck]

Hey Preds fans, Canucks fan coming in peace. I noticed the Preds lack what the Canucks have an abundance of. Quality bottom pairing d-men. Preds used to have an abundance of talent on D, but it seems like they stopped producing after Ellis and now just have a very solid top 3 (Ekholm, Ellis, Josi). Obviously you have Fabbro whom youre high on to develop into the guy to round out that 4, but after that you have a revolving door in the bottom pairing of fringe guys.

Looking at your immediate cap picture, only major UFAs are Smith and Granlund, both of whom from the outside looking in, seemed to have under performed their current contracts. The remaining UFAs are just depth d-men like Weber and Holzer. Hamhuis, if he doesn't retire I'm sure would take the same kind of deal for next season.

Nashville receives: Troy Stetcher + Canucks 6th round pick
Vancouver receives: the better of the 2 3rd round picks.

Stetcher is a RFA with arbitration rights, but we dont think he gets more than 2.5M. I personally feel if he isn't traded, he may see what happened to Hutton last year happen to him. Canucks dont qualify him and offer him a deal like 1.5-2M per year. Only difference is, he doesn't want to leave Vancouver so I can see him accepting that immediately to stay compared to Hutton, whom wanted to test the market and had the offer pulled once the Canucks landed Benn and Myers.

This gives Nashville a #5 dman they didnt have this past season (unless Hamhuis was still good enough for that role). Stetcher is good enough to play top 4 in a pinch, but he's too undersized and average at everything to rely on there if you want to contend. He's a huge upgrade on the likes of Weber/Holzer/Tinordi.

The reason I want to move on from Stetcher is because we have no room for him here anymore due to a lack of cap space and him being too small to play the physical game he sometimes tries to. The Canucks D is already pretty soft and having an undersized d-man whom is average at everything doesnt change that. We have Tryamkin coming back and also will have to give some of our prospects a look as they have 1 last season of waiver eligibility.

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[Porter Stoutheart]

I wouldn't automatically rule out trading for a bottom-pairing D, but I'd certainly be "reluctant" to do so. First, I would want to shop the UFA market. With a prioritization on some of the traits that I think our defense needs most --- which is to say size and strength. The players we've mentioned in the past are Edmundson, Gudas, Dillon.

So at the very least, trading for a stop-gap comes later on in the off-season, after the draft, after free-agency, which probably isn't the right timing for most other teams. And that's ok... if we end up with fillers again like Tinordi and Holzer... well... they surprisingly looked half decent for us. Maybe that was just too small a sample. But as we move forward organizationally, I think it will also be useful to be able to graduate some of our prospects into roles. Players like Davies, Carrier, and Farrance are probably in the same mould as Stecher, and I'd rather have them young and cheap at some stage rather than start right off wtih Stecher at $2.5M+.

Assuming the cap stays flat, we just aren't going to have a lot of room for experimentation. We may sign a RW, or we may look to a physical D. After that, we're going to have to plug the remaining roles with cheap youngsters from Milwaukee, most likely. So our best-case scenario is that we don't have room for a Stecher. He'd be more like a "Plan C" for us closer to the start of the season, by which time the ship will have sailed for you guys.

 

[GoldOnGold]

Honestly a pretty fair deal, but I think we'll probably be trying to graduate some prospect d-men first of all. If none of them seem ready, I could see a deal like this happening.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

Yeah, I hardly even looked at the value. Stecher and a 6th for a 3rd is certainly totally fine from the value side of things. Just still probably not the direction we'd go.

I guess the other thing I'm wondering is if the quality and value of Free Agents this year might actually be better than it even looks right now. As teams face their cap crunches, I wonder if some other RFAs might not be qualified, and if the pool of options grows, and if supply exceeds demand due to cap constraints, there might be some good bargains available. In our situation, I'd definitely wait it out to see how that market evolves before I make a trade. Even though it's just a 3rd. If I can just sign a free agent and keep my 3rd, that's what I'd aim for.

 

[Mrfenn92]

Value wise it's a good trade for both sides. Not sure the preds will spend $2.5 million or so on a bottom pair dmen though.
Good proposal either way.

 

[Canuck Luck]

Fair enough. I was looking at all the teams that are weak on the bottom pairing of the backend. The Preds were the only team I could find that isn’t rebuilding and also doesn’t have a strong crop of prospects in the pipeline or young guys learning the ropes on the bottom pairing.

However there could be some guys I have no idea about. Players I misjudged. Kind of like Jack Rathbone for the Canucks. A former 5th rounder whom we have high expectations for, but to an outsider, they may not know that.

 

[Legionnaire11]

Kind of like Jack Rathbone for the Canucks.