nfreeman

First and 2nd bolded: LeBrun reported that very few, and possibly only 3, teams were interested in taking the risk on the surgery. (He also reported that Carolina was probably only interested at a bargain-basement price, which I'd guess would've required substantial economics in the form of either salary retention or the Sabres taking back bad contracts.) You are right that Vegas finally ponied up a big price, and that there hasn't been much discussion in the hockey media of the injury risk, just as there wasn't much on this board at first, but that doesn't mean the risk isn't very real. It was real enough to scare off 28 NHL teams and for that matter to scare off Vegas until now. Third bolded: respectfully, this is a straw man. As I and many others here have said, Jack is 100% free to do whatever he likes with his body. He's just not free to do so AND continue to be entitled to $50MM of TP's money. Fourth bolded: of course they had a choice. You are, I believe, implying that they should've chosen to take the risk on the ADR surgery and have Jack return to play for the Sabres as an audition for other teams in order to increase the trade return. I think that while in theory this might have been feasible, in practice it would've been a pretty toxic situation that would've frozen the Sabres in Mickey Mouse franchise status and torpedoed yet another entire season. When you add the ADR risk I think the course they chose is quite rational and certainly not unreasonable. Fifth bolded: I don't think I've seen anything credible to the effect that this was personal to TP, who I believe has stayed quiet about this the whole time. (Not doubting that you have, but I'd be curious to see these reports.) Last bolded: I don't think anyone is pretending that TP was benignly protecting Jack from himself. The Sabres haven't been dishonest about this. KA has been pretty clear that he's approached this situation with the goal protecting the team's interests.

I agree with most of this but not the bolded. Refusing to take the risk on the ADR was not "holding Jack's health hostage" or "handcuffing the GM." There was simply no reason for TP to take the risk on the ADR. LeBrun has reported that only a few teams -- apparently maybe only 3 -- were willing to do so, and those were the teams that were going to acquire Eichel -- i.e. the teams that would get the upside of a healed Eichel in exchange for taking the risk. If there is any evidence or even hints of evidence in support of the bolded, I'd like to hear it. I'd also point out that TP paid Eichel in full despite Eichel's refusal to get the medically recommended procedure -- we never heard any indication that the Sabres were considering suspending him. That is the opposite of petty. This is just semantics, but I'd call offering only a 1- or 2-year term (and Vogl reported that it was only 1 or 2 years) lowballing him.

So I’m not much of a soccer fan, but I’m in London visiting family and we are going to a pretty big EPL game tomorrow — West Ham vs Liverpool. It’s #2 vs #4, and Liverpool evidently has a guy, Mohammed Salah, who is regarded as one of the best players in the world. The game is being played in a sold-out 55K seat arena that was built for the 2012 Olympics and hosted the opening and closing ceremonies. This will be by far the biggest soccer game I have ever attended. Should be pretty raucous in the upper deck, which is where we’re sitting. I’m looking forward to it.

Great wheels.

From LeBrun in the Athletic: Sources confirmed Thursday that not nearly as many teams got serious on Eichel as one would think for a player of his caliber. His health situation, his $10-million cap hit and the timing of the Sabres wanting to move him were all contributing factors for some teams who just couldn’t make a meaningful move. The final three suitors, according to sources, were Vegas, Calgary and Carolina… The Anaheim Ducks had stayed in touch with the Sabres dating back to last summer but fell out of it, I’m told, because they weren’t ready to risk dealing for him pre-surgery.

Well, some people like to argue. Still, you have, for 4 pages of this thread, pushed hard on the assertion that KA's statement, if taken 100% literally, reflected a questionable judgment. My point was just that there is no reason to take his statement 100% literally -- or to argue about it -- as in the real world the scenario raised by the 100% literal interpretation almost certainly didn't happen. There are much bigger fish to fry.

Not an asset good enough to justify the retention.

Respectfully, I think you're taking this too literally. It seems pretty clear that KA wasn't interested in handicapping the Sabres' cap flexibility for the next 5 years. Would the handicap of, say, a $1MM cap retention been worth, say, 2 more first-round picks? Almost certainly yes, but something like that was almost certainly not on the table. For salary retention to have been meaningful to the acquiror, it would've had to have been in a substantial amount. KA wasn't interested in locking up a substantial amount of cap space for the next 5 years. He didn't use those exact words, but I think the meaning is pretty clear.

Serious question: if the Sabres don’t really get Tkachuk, but rather just a Reinhart-trade-level return for him, is that Calgary trade really compelling? It looks like a couple of medium-low first-rounders, a young player who is just OK and one or 2 non blue chip prospects. Am I missing something?

I hate to say it, but this strikes me as probably correct.

I don't think it's a cap issue. I think it's the $50MM left on Jack's deal, which will not be insurable when Jack has the ADR, and the (logical) desire of the acquirors to reduce that number as much as possible by getting the Sabres to retain part of it, take back bad contracts, or both.

Not every negative opinion about other posters needs to be aired.

Instant karma's gonna get you...

So far we’re getting subpar JA.

Looking like paper tigers so far.

To me it seems like Zemgus’ line is the 2nd line, Cozens’ line is the 3rd and R2’s is the 4th. I think the Skinner move is about getting him more ice time since Cozens is getting less these days.

In theory, yes. In practice, I think there is zero downside to wait until draft day 2022. I don't think the trade return that day will be worse than what is available now and I think it's substantially likely to be better. I agree that waiting beyond draft 2022 would be prejudicial, as the draft picks received in trade at that point would be 2023 picks at the earliest.

Why?

Well, no one can know for sure, but I think it is pretty reasonable to conclude that waiting for teams like Vegas, Montreal, etc to feel pressure will result in better offers than whatever has been offered to date. There also doesn’t seem to be much if any downside to waiting.

But why would he do this?

It's an interesting test of the predictive power of the masses as to a question that 99% of the masses have close to zero knowledge -- and even in that scenario, the predictive power of the masses has proven to be surprisingly accurate.

It sure seems like the lines and pairs have been pretty stable other than injury adjustments. Of course, they’re off to a great start, so there hasn’t been much pressure to juggle them.

Well, per our recent conversation, I think this is another situation in which KA should be judged on the outcome. If Levi turns into Tom Barrasso, and Reinhart continues at his current good-but-not-great level, then Levi will be more valuable and KA should be credited, especially for making a silk purse from a sow’s ear.

FWIW, here is the SB Nation Vegas site's ranking of their top 25 players under age 25: No. 10: Dylan Coghlan No. 9: Kaedan Korczak No. 8: Jack Dugan No. 7: Lucas Elvenes No. 6: Nicolas Roy No. 5: Nicolas Hague No. 4: Peyton Krebs No. 3: Zach Whitecloud No. 2: Cody Glass No. 1: Alex Tuch

Well, I think a huge part of a GM's job is to predict outcomes based on available info and get enough of them -- especially the big ones, like drafting Josh Allen over Josh Rosen, or an Eichel trade -- right over time to produce good results. In this case, KA's analysis on pulling the trigger on a trade has to factor in a bunch of information, including medical prognostications, the trade market, what he thinks the trade market will look like in a month, the risk of losing a grievance, etc. It probably is unfair to credit/blame a GM for the outcome of a single big move, instead of the aggregate of a bunch of moves over time, but that's why they get paid millions of dollars to do a job that a million message board mouse potatoes would love to have.