Not trying to be ignorant but is Gardiner not better than at least their 3rd pairing LHD? I assume he would be as good if not better than their 2nd pairing LHD, allowing them to trade whoever was in that space for Picks/More Cap Room/RHD, and also wouldn’t they be able to re-sign him if they no longer have Spurgeon Contract on the books?
He's a better player than Seeler, but Seeler at $725k as the bottom-pairing LD makes a whole lot more sense than Gardiner at $4m (and likely much more than that on an extension).
If we ignore the fall-out, going from Brodin to Gardiner on the 2nd pairing seems like an upgrade. But it falls apart when you consider the bigger picture:
- This still leaves us with a big question mark on the right side
- We're going to be paying a ****ton of money for Suter ($7.5m), Dumba ($6.5m?) and Gardiner ($6.Xm?), which makes filling that RD hole even harder
- Unless the return for Brodin is incredibly good, all we've done is stuck a top-4 that was already great in the blender and made it more expensive. And it's entirely likely that we've made it worse.
The Wild's defense looks very good right now. I think with Dumba's development over the last 3 years we can afford to move Spurgeon and trade a forward for a cheaper, younger middle-pairing RD, but Spurgeon for Gardiner makes very little sense for us.
