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Canes Trade for K’Andre Miller

Look. Miller was a top pairing guy playing 20+ minutes a game on the Rangers team that won the freaking President's Trophy two years ago. He'll be fine. Yeah, he had a car crash of a season in NY while the team fell apart around him (including getting saddled with the rotting corpse of Jacob Trouba for about 20 games), but Rangers fans blaming him for every single defensive issue that team had are ... ummm ... unhinged. He's far from perfect but he's got a lot of the attributes that Carolina has shown they can use in their system. If he's willing to learn a new system, he'll probably be very good here pretty quickly.
 
I lay a lot of the Rangers' 2024/2025 season's woes at the feet of the coaching staff, especially Lavy's. That dude should've been shown the door no later than December, but the front office blamed everyone but the head coach.
 
If/when the Miller trade goes through, the Canes will have or have had these guys from the first round of the 2018 Draft:

2 - Svech
3 - KK
17 - Ty Smith. Played 8 games for the Canes, wasn’t qualified and is a UFA
22 - Miller
25 - Dominik Bokk. Acquired for Justin Faulk. Played parts of 2 seasons for the Wolves but never lived up to the draft spot. Currently playing in his native Germany.
 
I lay a lot of the Rangers' 2024/2025 season's woes at the feet of the coaching staff, especially Lavy's. That dude should've been shown the door no later than December, but the front office blamed everyone but the head coach.

I'd say Lavi and Drury equally get the blame, but yeah. Between them they threw basically every player under the bus at some point. They out and out broke Miller and Fox, which was ridiculous. All to hide the fact that they didn't react quickly enough to a rapidly aging core.
 
If that’s correct, with an AAV of $7.5 million the offer sheet compensation is a first, second and third round pick. The Canes don’t have a 2026 3rd rounder, that went to the Coyotes for Ghost. So they can’t match the offer sheet compensation exactly, if that was the goal. But they’re working Canes do have 2 2027 third rounders.

Puckpedia is showing the contract as being complete. Salary of $5.5 million this year with a $2 million signing bonus, all other years are $7.5 million salary. Years 3-8 have a 10 team no trade list.

 
This marks the official end of Burns and Orlov I expect. It also gives us 4 LH shots and 2 RH shots on the blue line, which is ok as long as we figure out which of those LH shots will play on the right side.

So do we go with:

Slavin-Miller
Nikishin-Chatfield
Gostisbehere-Walker
 
I like the contract and the AAV, but I think including Morrow in the deal might be a bit of any overpay. With that said, that's a pretty solid six-man defense corps, with Reilly as an improvement over our previous options for a 7th defenseman.
 
This marks the official end of Burns and Orlov I expect. It also gives us 4 LH shots and 2 RH shots on the blue line, which is ok as long as we figure out which of those LH shots will play on the right side.

So do we go with:

Slavin-Miller
Nikishin-Chatfield
Gostisbehere-Walker
No. That d is not going to cut it. I expect more things to come.
 
Conditional first and a second ... ok. Morrow? Yeah, I guess. All three? Boy, I liked that trade better when it only had two parts moving back. That said, I'm not nearly as sold on Morrow as most of you guys are. And I'm 100% not going to get all invested in pairings at this stage of things. Pretty pointless IMO. Everybody seems to want to chunk Nikishin right into the top six, but I'm not so sure the team is so comfortable with that. Wouldn't shock me at all to see another RD signing (maybe even Burns) with Boom playing in Chicago until he actually gets the hang of North American hockey and the system. This has never been a team that's real comfortable with their D learning on the fly.
 
Miller is young, had some brain cramps and breakdowns, but I also recall that he has some speed, a physical edge and could log some heavy minutes. I’ll take an NHL ready player that’s signed to an appropriate, long term contract. I think this is a good use of hockey capital and we will be pleased in the long run.
 
That said, I'm pretty comfortable with the idea that Miller will fit the system and I absolutely LOVE that he was ready to go 8 years right out of the gate. He's played against Carolina enough to know exactly what they're all about and he had zero hesitation to commit. For a fan base feeling a bit bruised by guys who aren't so hot on being here, well ... today was a good day. They got not one but two guys to the max today. Good players at decent value, too.
 
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