Pro Hockey Rumors

Topics in this edition of the PHR Mailbag include Carolina’s acquisition of K’Andre Miller, the Bowen Byram situation in Buffalo, and more.  If your question doesn’t appear here, check back in one of our next two mailbag columns.

MoneyBallJustWorks: I imagine the Maple Leafs aren’t done tinkering with their lineup. What do you see as the next move for this team and do you think they are a tougher team to play against today than they were at the end of last year?

Technically, it turns out that the next move was them finding a taker for Ryan Reaves with them getting Henry Thrun from San Jose for him.  Maybe Thrun makes the team as a seventh or eighth defenseman, maybe he winds up on waivers.  But with Reaves set to count for $200K against the cap had he been back with the AHL’s Marlies (he makes $1.35MM and the maximum buriable amount is $1.15MM), they at least saved a bit of cap space.

I think there’s some smoke to the Jack Roslovic speculation.  He was recently connected to Toronto and while the talk of reconnecting with Auston Matthews seems a bit overblown, I think there’s a fit.  The Maple Leafs feel like a team that’s going to shake up the lines a bit more next season so having some players who can move up and down in the lineup with some positional flexibility makes sense.  A short-term deal with him that gives him a soft landing and allows Toronto to keep its options open soon after feels like a reasonable move to make.

As for being tougher to play against, it depends on what you mean by tougher.  If you mean are they more physical, maybe.  Nicolas Roy isn’t overly physical but he plays more of a heavy game than Mitch Marner.  Matias Maccelli is one of the least physical players in the league so if you say he takes Pontus Holmberg’s spot on the roster (not in terms of line placement), that might offset any physicality gain from Marner to Roy.  But if you mean more difficult to play against, no.  I like Roy and Maccelli but that’s a big drop in talent compared to Marner.  If I’m an opposing coach, one less star player to gameplan against means they’re probably less difficult of an opponent (but still a strong team in general).

William 12: Is K’Andre Miller worth the price Carolina paid to get him? Also, who is your pick for best sneaky good/under-the-radar trade or free agency acquisition so far this offseason?

If Carolina can get Miller to settle down a bit defensively, he should be.  He is already a top-four defender who has shown flashes of being closer to a number two option at his best.  In this market, $7.5MM for a player with that ceiling isn’t bad, if, again, he becomes more reliable in his own end.

In terms of the trade cost, it would have cost them a first, a second, and a third had they offered $7.5MM on an offer sheet.  They’d have been capped at offering six years at that price as well.  The maximum denominator for an offer sheet is five years so a six-year offer would have been $45MM divided by five or $9MM for offer sheet purposes, keeping them just inside that threshold.  Was it worth parting with Scott Morrow to get two more years on the contract?  If they’re convinced that Miller can be the player they think he can be, I’d say yes.  Meanwhile, New York is probably quite pleased with the return as well.

I think Brent Burns to Colorado is a signing that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention.  Yes, he’s slowing down but he can still play on a second pairing and be a secondary contributor offensively.  With a bonus-laden structure, the contract gives the Avs extra flexibility to add another piece at some point either this summer or in-season and they’ll just have to absorb the bonus hit in 2026-27, cutting into their spending room then.  But when you’re in win-now mode, adding that good of a player for a $1MM base salary is pretty good.

Now, if you’re looking for someone more under the radar than that, I’ll nominate Jakob Pelletier.  He signed a three-year, minimum-salary deal with Tampa Bay with an AAV that will ultimately rise each year thanks to the pending increases to the minimum salary with the CBA extension.  He did pretty well in a bottom-six role last season in 49 games and has a track record of success at the lower levels.  He brings more upside to Tampa’s bottom line than they’ve had in recent years at as low a price tag as possible.  For a no-risk move, there’s some upside to it.

12Kelly: Now that Adams has filed arbitration on Byram, does that hamper any trade the Sabres were working on? I am very disappointed in our GM and I think we will end up keeping Byram as an unhappy player and go through this next year. Why can’t Adams make a good trade, especially since the Blues are really interested in Byram? Another year of missing the playoffs is on the horizon.

In the immediate term, Buffalo’s decision to take Bowen Byram to arbitration doesn’t necessarily hamper any trade talks.  If there’s a team out there – St. Louis or otherwise – who wants him, they can swing a trade and try to sign him before the arbitration hearing which will be scheduled between July 20th and August 4th.  If the hearing is more toward the back of that range, there’s still upwards of three weeks to work something out.  That’s still ample time, especially if the acquiring team has a good indication of Byram’s asking price already.

But once things get closer to the hearing, then it’s going to hamper talks.  Because the Sabres were the team to file against Byram, Byram gets to pick the term of the contract – either one or two years.  The latter would walk him right to UFA eligibility at the age of 26 so that definitely is going to be a temptation.  Once they get to the point of starting the hearing, that’s it and if Byram does pick the two-year deal, his trade value is going to dip as there won’t be the ability to work out a long-term agreement as part of the swap.  Suffice it to say, there’s a firm clock now and it’s definitely running.

The decision to take him to arbitration was to take the threat of an offer sheet off the table, one that would have secured Buffalo only draft-pick compensation.  And at this point, it feels like some of the suitors are preferring to go with futures-based offers which is what GM Kevyn Adams doesn’t want as his goal is to get the Sabres back to the playoffs.  That’s a goal that already seems unlikely and without Byram, it would be even tougher.  The decision to take the offer sheet option off the table hedges against that happening but it cranks up the pressure.

ljfranker: What would the Blues have to pay for Byram? Is Jiricek, Stenberg, and offer sheet compensation reasonable?

haubrick: Do the Blues ultimately pull off a trade for Bowen Byram?

Let’s put the St. Louis questions together here.  I assume the projected contract offer for Byram is in the $7.02MM to $9.36MM tier which carries a return of a first-round pick, a second rounder, and a third rounder.  That plus two first-round prospects in Adam Jiricek and Otto Stenberg feels like quite the overpayment.  That’s more than what Montreal gave up for Noah Dobson who is a more proven player.  And yet, I don’t think Buffalo would say yes to that even though the offer would be in their favor.

As noted above, the Sabres aren’t thinking about rebuilding.  They’re banking on this group taking a step or two forward and getting into the mix for a Wild Card spot this season.  While it’s fair to question whether that’s the right approach, achieving that goal would be much harder by taking out a top-four defender and replacing him with a bunch of future assets that aren’t NHL-ready yet.

For St. Louis or any other team to get Byram in a trade, there has to be a key core player coming back to get Buffalo at least more open to the idea of moving him.  Think Jake Neighbours, Dylan Holloway, Philip Broberg, or even Jordan Kyrou who has popped up in trade speculation although he has a no-move clause that could scuttle that thought in a hurry.  If they want to avoid dipping into Torey Krug’s LTIR pool, they’ll basically need to match whatever they give Byram in terms of outgoing salaries which could add another player or two to the swap as well.  I’m not sure the Blues are willing to part with that core piece (making it a change to the core, not a true addition) which is why I’m skeptical that they can get this over the finish line.

Dan from Buffalo: Lifelong Sabres fan, I’m 100% hoping we re-sign Alex Tuch at some point this offseason. I know he’s due for a nice raise from his current deal, should I be worried the longer the summer goes with no news?

I wouldn’t be worried if the summer comes and goes without an extension.  While some players move quickly to sign contract extensions as soon as they’re eligible – we saw that with a few players on July 1st – many more haven’t yet.  And it’s a pretty prominent list of those eligible who haven’t, one that includes Connor McDavid, Kirill Kaprizov, Artemi Panarin, Kyle Connor, and Jack Eichel, among many others.  Those teams shouldn’t be worried yet so it’s not time to worry about Tuch just yet either.

At this point, it feels like players seem a bit more open to waiting things out and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the case with Tuch here.  I don’t question his stated desire to stick around but at the same time, I think he might want to see where things stand before putting pen to paper on a new contract.  If Buffalo winds up having a change of heart and moves Byram for futures or struggles out of the gate in the first half, leaving Adams to seriously start to ponder another rebuild, Tuch’s enthusiasm for sticking around for the long haul might be tempered.

If Tuch remains unsigned a couple of weeks before the trade deadline, that’s when I’d start to get concerned from a Buffalo perspective.  While the Sabres re-signed a pair of pending UFAs close to the deadline back in March, there’s a big talent difference between Tuch versus Jason Zucker and Jordan Greenway.  Those two wouldn’t yield the type of impactful future-based return that Tuch would, one that would be difficult for Adams to pass up at that point.  But for now, the fact that an extension hasn’t been signed less than two weeks after being eligible isn’t too concerning.

PyramidHeadcrab: Is there a goaltending shortage in the NHL? It seems like quite a few teams are searching for a true starter where none are available, with a large drop-off in quality after the top 20-25 netminders. This doesn’t seem to be an issue with other positions, though those positions typically take less time to cook.

If true, how could this problem be systematically rectified within the league? And considering the goalies in development and those yet to be drafted, does relief appear to be on the horizon?

It certainly feels like there’s a goaltending shortage in the NHL right now.  And there definitely is a drop-off quality-wise.  But I’m not sure there’s a big fix that can be made.

More teams appear to be navigating toward a lower-cost platoon system which means there isn’t necessarily a big differentiator between the starter and the backup goalie.  While top goalies like Igor Shesterkin can break the bank, I don’t think there are a ton of organizations who would be willing to go really high on a contract for a player that might only play in 70-75% of the games.

There’s also the matter of shooters being better.  I don’t know how many times I’ve caught myself when writing about a goalie’s save percentage, for example.  I might have something along the lines of so-and-so struggled with a SV% of just .902 before I remember that a mark just over .900 is now considered above average whereas a few years ago, it was below average.  A few years before that, if you could barely scrape above .900, you weren’t a guarantee to stay in the NHL.  Yes, some of that is a drop-off in the supply of good goalies but shooters now are better than they were not even a decade ago.

I suppose the fix could be to try to restrict some of the technological improvements for skaters or allow some equipment improvements for goalies but I doubt there’s much appetite for that beyond the goaltenders themselves wanting some extra help.

You could look at it from a grassroots perspective in that goaltender is the most expensive position for kids growing up.  But there’s no way around that and it’s not the NHL’s responsibility to be funneling money into youth hockey programs worldwide to offset the price of equipment so I don’t think there’s a fix there either.

I don’t expect things to change much moving forward.  There are a handful of above-average goalies in various prospect pools but certainly not an overwhelming amount that will eventually lead to a material improvement in goalie performance in the NHL.  Lots of the prospects out there carry the ceiling of a platoon netminder which, for a lot of organizations, isn’t viewed as a bad thing.

If I’m being honest, I don’t think the NHL truly considers this a problem.  For years, there were summits on how to increase goal scoring and now that this is happening, they’re probably pleased with that result.  There is still enough of a supply of higher-end starters that some teams have some flexibility in structuring their rosters (go for a true starter and a low-cost backup versus the more common 50/30 type of split) so it’s not a cookie-cutter situation in terms of roster-building.  Frankly, instead of it being a problem to solve, I suspect the NHL hopes that this is the new normal moving forward.

frozenaquatic: There was a discussion on r/hockey where we were talking about “best trades that benefited both teams.” There were a lot of obvious answers: Iginla for Nieuwendyk, ROR for Tage, RBA for Keith Primeau. But it got me thinking, what is the real answer to this question? We could only come up with one instance ALL-TIME where traded players won Cups with their new respective teams. STL trades Ian Cole to PIT for Robert Bortuzzo and a 2016 7th on March 2nd, 2015. Both Cole and Bortuzzo won cups with their new teams, both of them playing significant roles in the Cup run. Is this really the only case of this ever happening? Is this the greatest trade in NHL history?

Off-hand, I started looking through several seasons of old trades to see if I could spot one.  It served as a stark reminder about how a lot of trades wind up making very little of a difference in the long run but I couldn’t spot another one that met the criteria of both players winning a Stanley Cup with their new team.  I can’t sit here and say that’s the only instance of that happening – it easily could have back in the Original Six days (and I tried to look through some trades from those days to see if one popped) – but it has to be a pretty short list.

Does that make it the best trade in NHL history?  That’s one of those questions where the answer is in the eye of the beholder.  Was it ultimately a big win-win move (literally) for both sides?  It sure was.  But I suspect a lot of fans would have a different ‘best trade ever’ in mind.

Photo courtesy of Timothy T. Ludwig-Imagn Images.