• Moderators, please send me a PM if you are unable to access mod permissions. Thanks, Habsy.

The Official 2026 Off-Season Thread: Revenge of the Nerds

Carlson would be a very good add. Short term deal so downside is low and he likely performs the same as the top ufas for the next two years. Him plus one of Raddysh or Andersson would probably be the best move.
 
It’ll be interesting to see what they do. Because I think there is still a lot of room for nerds to be productive with the blue line (Forsling, Montour, Malinski, Raddysh, Toews, Miller etc). But there is only really one way to get a 1D and that’s draft or be aggressive in the trade market. Do they have the balls to make a werenski/fox deal?

Or yeah they can do the easy thing like they have in the Dubas/Tre era and just spend a lot on good vet bandaids that will solve the problem in the short term. But the more you participate in that market the greater the downside risk. Especially in the medium to long term.
 
LeafGm said:
Carlson’s a UFA, is he not?
Click to expand...

He is. I was referring to the other 3. Carlson is going to be in the 3x7 million range at 37-39 for anyone who wants him and we would have to get an American defender who has never played in Canada to leave the US. He played his junior in London, so maybe he likes it here, who knows. But that seems like an uphill fight to me
 
most likely they will have to deal from where they have some degree of depth (wing) to address D or C, whichever they are less able to patch in free agency.
 
trujaysfan said:
1x10.5 if we have space.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but I doubt it. At his age this could be the last time he's of interest to the market at anything resembling these numbers. He's most likely going to take the max guaranteed money he's offered. I wouldn't be surprised to see the winning contract to hit 4 yrs tbh. When AFP gets it "wrong" it's usually on the term like they did with the Coyle contract a few weeks ago.
 
I really think Hayton is the play at C. Young prime, handles top matchups, possibly has untapped offensive upside (the nerdies are there at least).

I don't know how motivated Utah is to move him, but we know they haven't re-signed him yet (RFA) so that's enough to think he's available.

Utah seems to have a number of C prospects coming up which would explain their hesitancy, even though many C prospects end up as wingers.

There's no clean fit with our assets for them though - Utah has pretty decent depth all around, so it's hard to see exactly what they want in return.



Though now that I think about, an interesting wrinkle might be Sean Durzi. He signed a 4 x $6m contract 2yrs ago, but immediately got a shoulder injury that required surgery 4gms into year 1, and hasn't really bounced back yet. With the trade for Weegar, who joined Sergachev on the top pair, Durzi was bounced down to the 3rd pair with Ian Cole (with the 2nd pair being the Schmidt-Marino defensive matchup pair).

No idea what the prognosis for Durzi's shoulder is, but at age 28 a 2 x $6m gamble might be worth it, because he fits what we want. And with Utah likely wanting to promote offensive #6 overall LD Simashov to the NHL fulltime next year, they might prefer to have a steady gudpro like Carlo to pair him up with on the bottom pair rather than an offensive D like Durzi.


A lot would depend on his medicals, but a Hayton+Durzi swoop would be interesting.
 
leafman101 said:
Realistically the only way he is coming here is if we pay him the most. Which is tough.
Click to expand...

I'd rather aim elsewhere tbh. I don't think Carlson is a legit option for us. As for the other elite olds, I'd be shocked if Doughty wanted to come here, Karlsson is interesting but with Malkin signing a 1 yr it looks like they're just going to run the retirement tour back, and Burns is a UFA but he's on his cup chasing tour right now and probably just re signs with Colorado to take another kick at a chip. I don't know if any of those guys are actual options for us.

I think our main options are the in prime UFA's (Raddysh, Andersson, Shea), the RFA's whose teams might not want to pay them (Spence, Zellweger, Clarke, Edvinsson), good veteran defenders on contracts their org might want to move off of (Hamilton, Josi) the legit homerun swing (Fox), or nerd magic (????????)

A sneaky good situation we should be looking for as this season's Dobson though is Brandt Clarke. He's allegedly not happy with how the Kings have slow rolled his development. He's wanted more and more responsibility (and his performance has suggested he's more than ready for it) and he's probably going to be asking huge money for a guy the Kings keep playing as their #3-4
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top