Originally posted by thedaigle1
View Post
I don't even know where to begin...
Let me start with the places I agree: yes, a left shot center to play with Stone and Ryan is a good thing. Yes, Brassard is very good on the powerplay - that is basically the only difference to their offensive numbers - although I think Zibanejad had the potential to be as well, if he was used more often on the left point beside Karlsson on the top unit. And one thing you didn't pointed out, which is really the best possible explanation I've been able to come up with for this trade, is that Zibanejad seemed to have serious issues with consistency, but he is still fairly young, so there is still room for that to improve. Perhaps conditioning, but that's something I know nothing about.
Now, I guess I start with the first point, Hoffman's contract. I went through and did these calculations a couple of weeks ago because I was worried about a possible Hoffman offer sheet. Even if someone were to give him the maximum second-level offer sheet - around 7.5 million - and Zibanejad were to re-sign next year at 5.25 million (this was the number I predicted two weeks ago, before this trade), we'd still come in between 5 and 10 million under the cap (depending on the structure of Ceci's contract and how Pageua and Lazar do this season and what kind of contracts they earn).
True, maybe it's not just the cap we have to worry about, but an internal budget. Still, lets think about this rationally for a moment. There would have been essentially two possible scenarios: either Zibanejad doesn't improve much over last season, in which case, some of his recent comparables for contract negotiations would be Nick Foligno, Frans Nielsen, Clark MacArthur, Vince Trocheck, and Derick Brassard himself. Meaning he'd be getting somewhere between 4.75-5.5 million. The other, admittedly less likely, possible scenario would be that he has a breakout season and we'd have to pay up with a huge contract, but honestly, if we suddenly have a 65-70 point first line center, is anyone going to complain about having to give him a massive contract, especially when we have the cap space to pay him?
Originally posted by thedaigle1
View Post
Aside from the occasional morons, the Sens fans who were saying we are wasting the prime years of the core were not the same people who were upset about mortgaging the future. And for those that were saying both, you also have to take timing into consideration: about two years ago it was looking like this was a young team on the brink of becoming a contender, so it made sense to think it was time to make a move, but now we've taken a step back over the past couple years, so it makes sense to be hesitant about trying to suddenly make a contender out of a team that missed the playoffs last year.
The Phaneuf trade made sense, we barely gave up any futures, pretty much just Lindberg. Even the Ryan trade was pretty decent. But this isn't just picks and prospects here. This is player who just turned 23 and is entering his 5th (or 4th full) season. Just hitting his prime.
Originally posted by thedaigle1
View Post
Originally posted by thedaigle1
View Post
Originally posted by thedaigle1
View Post
So yeah, I'm emotional about the trade, I was and still am a huge Zibanejad fan. But the beauty of the human being is, as Nietzsche said, "human is a bridge between ape and posthuman (overhuman, superhuman, or however you want to translate it)." Now this can be interpreted a lot of different ways, but if we take it that the ape represents pure emotion or instinct, and the superhuman represents pure rationality, then this highlights perfectly the point I want to make: it doesn't have to be a choice for humans; our emotions can be backed up by rational argument, and our rational arguments can lead us to feel certain emotions, and both of those statements are perfectly exemplified in this case. You said you talked yourself off the ledge, for me, I started out with a pure emotional reaction, then I stepped back, calmed down, took some time to think about and research the situation, and now not only has my rationalizing justified my emotional response, it has in fact intensified it.
Leave a comment: