Thursday, June 15, 2017

Emails with Lozo: Welcome to the offseason

The following is from an email exchange between Dave Lozo and Sean McIndoe (Down Goes Brown). Each month they will talk some nonsense and debate the biggest topics in the NHL in our monthly review. You can also check out the Biscuits podcast with Sean and Dave as they discuss the events of the week.

Hi Dave...

Welcome to summer. After eight months of hockey, the season is over and we're officially on to the offseason. And in theory, it should be an especially entertaining one. With an expansion draft less than a week away and a bunch of trades, buyouts and other maneuvering that presumably has to happen before then, we could be looking at one of the busier weeks in recent history.

So my first question is: Am I just getting my hopes up here? Is there any chance the next week lives up to the hype?

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Lozo: The next week will be a lot like the Ottawa Senators in the playoffs. It will involve a lot average players in the spotlight getting a lot of attention but ultimately it will let you down in the end. Remember the Teravainen/Bickell trade? Packaging a good player with a bad deal? That'll be the height of it. A bunch of those moves. A couple buyouts. A non-expansion trade that will be decent.

Marc-Andre Fleury going to Vegas should be the biggest expansion story, but there's no way the Knights hang on to him, right? They have to flip him to Calgary or somewhere else.

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DGB: The cynic in me wonders if the whole "Marc-Andre Fleury is the greatest teammate ever" victory tour that's broken out over the past few days might at least be a partial case of the Penguins working to create a market. Sure, his numbers aren't great, but if he's Mark Messier in goalie gear, surely some team that values heart and grit over performance would be willing to pay up. And yes, that team would be Calgary.

The flip side is that the Penguins have four decent defensemen and probably only three protection slots. So it's plausible that they decide to just let the Knights take Fleury so that they don't have to worry about the rest of their roster. I guess it all comes down to where they can find the most value.

Speaking of value, or whatever the opposite of value would be: Dan Girardi. The Rangers announced they are buying him out. You're a New York guy... is this remotely a surprise?

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Lozo: Not in the least. Girardi hasn't been good in quite some time and Rangers fans will wonder forever if they could have contended again in 2015 if they had let Girardi walk and signed Anton Stralman instead. I mean, they contended. They got to a conference final Game 7 and lost to the Lightning… and Stralman.

There's a great teammate vibe about Girardi, too. But while Fleury had value, Girardi hasn't had value since maybe 2014. Girardi is the poster boy for the new NHL in terms of defenseman who can start breakouts and analytics. It's funny that Girardi types are being phased out of the game faster than fighters.

Now the Rangers have freed some more room for Kevin Shattenkirk, who should help carry the Rangers to maybe the second round again.

You know what's weird? The notion the Preds can't lose James Neal. If it creates room to sign a No. 2 center, that's good because they need that more than a scoring winger.

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DGB: I'm guess I'm OK with the Predators thing only because their season just ended, and they came so close to winning the Cup. If anyone should be allowed to overrate their existing assets, it's probably them.

But yeah, the rest of this league is getting ridiculous. All these GMs who are about to lose their 14th best player and seem to think it's the end of the world. You know how many players each team lost in the 1967 expansion draft? Twenty! Each! I am using exclamation points! Today's GMs don't have to make trades and get magic bonus points for losing, and somehow they're still here having panic attacks because they might have to part with Jay Beagle.

In related news, Tyler Graovac just got traded, so buckle up because now anything can happen.

>> Read the full post at Vice Sports




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