Perhaps Chicago was asking for too much of a sweetener in the summer when they had the option to overpay for free agents instead of helping another team out with their cap situation.
I'm sure management knew what the cost was to dump Beau in the summer and weighed that against what options they had to spend that potential freed up cap on. Ultimately they decided it wasn't worth it. Without knowing all those details and permutations it's hard to judge.
That said, open cap space in general is a valuable asset even if you don't have a plan for it right away. However, in the end, I'm just happy with getting rid of a negative value asset with the pick being the cherry on top.
Yeah. I get what Drance is saying there. There's an "opportunity cost" to having had that $4.125M cap hit on the books going into the season. That could've been money put toward a better forward, or more importantly more defensive help.
But the reality is, hanging onto Beauvillier and even just acquiring in that Bo trade in the first place, was just the cost of doing business. It was a bad contract dumped on us to offset salary and make the trade work. There was likely zero interest in him over the summer. It would've been a, "pay to dump him" scenario. Teams like the Blackhawks, Ducks, etc. with spare cap space were trying to hold the league hostage...because they could. They largely opted to go out and just use their superior cap flexibility to overpay their own hand selected UFAs.
Obviously they wanted certain types of players in there as "mentors". The whole Perry thing obviously imploded, and that's what opened the doors to make this deal. But that's more the case of the Blackhawks suddenly being put on the back foot, flipping the trade leverage around a little bit to where they're kind of desperate to get a decent, competent forward in there. Things haven't worked out for their gambles with injuries, bizarre off-ice stuff, and other guys just straight up playing like turds.
But you can rest assured, if a trade like this for Beauvillier was on the table this summer...they would've jumped at the opportunity to be rid of him then. It just took some time for the opportunity to actually materialize.
So while Drance makes a somewhat fair point...it's also an imaginary, hypothetical scenario that didn't really exist. His scenario opens the door to questions about what the "opportunity cost" of holding Beauvillier actually is. Is it the different between "
gaining a high 5th round pick" vs "
giving up a 3rd round pick"? Personally, i'd wager no. But that's also contingent on what exactly they would've been able to reallocate that cap space toward. They already landed two good defencemen and two decent centers, plus another in trade as it was. Were they going to be able to land another good UFA Defenceman or Center worth having?