There are a lot of things beyond simple on-ice performance that a general manager must consider.
He has to consider the salary cap; moves that make no sense on the ice can make a lot of sense looking at a team's financial situation. He has to consider the long-term picture, which often means that moving a good player in the here-and-now makes sense if he can land a good draft pick. He has to look at years of team control, sometimes trading a player one or two years away from free agency for one still on his entry-level deal.
The following "Stock Up, Stock Down" slides ignore all those considerations. They ignore where a team is, whether a trade was good or not, and everything else in favour of a single focus: Did a team's on-ice personnel improve over the first week of free agency?
A good example would be the Phil Kessel trade. For our purposes here, we don't care about the picks and prospects that complicate the deal. We look at the NHL players involved, conclude that Kessel is better than Nick Spaling and decide that Pittsburgh improved in the deal and Toronto got worse. It's as simple as that.
Mileage will vary, of course; th ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
Stock Up, Stock Down for NHL Teams After 1st Week of Free Agency
July 8th, 2015 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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