LeafOfFaith
Well-known member
I never said anything about buying out Tavares that you need to distinguish anything here.Nobody suggested buying out Tavares.
Trading him because he's still good enough to possibly work out an interesting deal, especially with him being owed not very much in actual money though, is smart to consider.
OEL is unplayable. There is no conceivable way of trading away his caphit without taking as much dead cap in return.
OEL is not unplayable. He's just really, really not worth his current caphit. Buying him out was fucking foolish though.
Tavares is still a great player, even if not giving $11M of value. Moving heaven and earth to remove him so you can afford some better fourth liner is also fucking foolish.
Again - just because he's not providing full value doesn't necessarily mean ditching the player makes sense. And there are degrees of foolishness, since nobody can top Vancouver's idiocy today. But we can try to get close to it by dumping a star player, paying assets to get a replacement (who doesn't exist), to free up a small amount of cap for two years, and then having a shinier fourth liner for our troubles.