Not to mention their most recent first rounder, and best prospect defenseman...
I thought the Eberle trade would sober up some people around here regarding the trade value of underperforming, high cap hit forwards, but apparently not.
Eberle was traded because we needed to open up cap space to stave off any offer-sheets towards Drai, or at least be able to match them. Eberle was indeed over-paid and one-dimensional, so anyone who was expecting a big return for him didn't have a clue. RNH is a center -- a position of much greater value -- he's good defensively and can kill penalties. Not to mention that last season was the only one in which he scored or had a pro-rated full season production of less than 50 points (and almost always scores in the mid-50s with point totals or PPG rates, which is 2nd line production, basically) -- well okay, he had ONE other season of 49.5 pro-rated point production, but that's ALL, and that's still basically 50 points unless you want to split hairs so fine that it's ridiculous. So for all intents an purposes, Nuge has only scored less than at a 50 point pace for ONE season, and that was last season. Safe to say that was probably an outlier, wouldn't you say? Either way, a center like Nuge has more value than people think, even if he's overpaid by a million or so. He's worth much more to the team, and he simply does have a lot more value than Eberle; that's why Eberle was first out the door. I'd also say Eberle's season last year was more disastrous than Nuge's: for a scoring winger, he only scored 2 more goals than Nuge, and only put up 6 more points, meanwhile doing basically nothing else. At least Nuge can kill penalties and doesn't look lost defensively. I still wouldn't be expecting the moon for Nuge, but I think people might be surprised how much interest there will be and that we'll get a pretty good return -- certainly a better (or more established) player or assets of greater value. We'll see.
And actually, I'm happy with the return for Eberle. It was better than I expected. I think Strome can be a regular 40-50 point 3rd line center, which is something that we needed, and it opened up 3.5m in cap space. That has quite a bit of value, and that's a good return for a one-dimension, soft, small, slowish winger. His one dimension hasn't even been very good the last couple seasons -- nowhere near to make-up for all his shortcomings, and his only 30 goal season came what seems like a lifetime ago. When he was signed to that 6 million dollar contract, they surely expected regular 30 goal seasons from him, and NOT for it to be a one time thing, but very convenient that after his 34 goal, 76 point season (in 78 games, so near a PPG rate) his production has dropped IMMEDIATELY after signing that fat contract and he hasn't come close to that rate of production, neither goal or point totals, since then. I don't think you win with guys like that; I don't think he's willing to sacrifice as much as guys who are true winners are willing to make in order to win, so he's really no loss, IMO, and tons of us were getting tired of him in recent years on this board. On the other hand, I think Strome can help this team, and fill an important hole on the 3rd line C position. I think Strome can score 45 with regular 3rd line C duty, while playing a good defensive game, so I'm good with the trade. From my understanding from Islander fans, his 50 point season came while playing almost entirely at center, then he was moved to wing where his points, usage and effectiveness went down; to say they had an awful coach before Dougie is putting it mildly. Considering how disastrous of a season it was for Eberle (even worse than Nuge's season, IMO, as I mentioned earlier) the return of a young C with a 50 point season under his belt while playing center with perhaps still untapped potential and very nice chunk of free cap space that we could use to sign McDavid and Drai (and I'd MUCH rather them have that money) was a good return.