I know tant. I literally did mean "if you could" as in if it were possible. If it is possible to trade Booth.. I'd think about that if there's another move lined up to bring in a more effective player.tantalum wrote:you can't compliance buy out Booth until next summer. He's hurt.
I also think if you wanted to, he is still a guy that can be moved based on some of the recent signings. (Boyd gordon at $3 mil? seriosuly? he's never scored 30 point for goodness sakes).
It's no guarantee. I don't think you necessarily have to move Kesler to the wing as you could potentially slide Grabovski or Schroeder over.. but even then I'm less stuck on the idea that Kesler has to play center than I used to be.But in order to do that you need to find that $5.5-6 mil player. Grabovski may be that type of guy but I still wonder about the wisdom of moving Kesler to the wing such a move would necessitate. Grabovski did well in his defensive matchups but he isn't a Selke winner. Not convinced Grabovski in the end would be any better quality wise though it would be a shakeup.
It'd be a fair bit of flexibility though. Grabovski and Schroeder could play together on a soft minutes offensive line with each one taking draws on their strong side, leaving Kesler to take on the tough matchups; Kesler could play on Schroeder's wing (or vice versa) and Grabovski could take on the tough matchups; the team could go with Grabovski, Kesler and Schroeder each centering their own line with Schroeder on the fourth line between a couple of big bruisers.
And of course if/when Kesler goes down the team can still ice three respectable lines.
Anyway I don't think it's realistic.. in fact I started down this road talking about how Grabovski is pretty much the only guy left I'd dump Booth for at this point.
Yeah. And fair enough. I thought before that this offseason would be a real crossroads and barring something like a big free agent signing it would appear that Gillis has made his choice and will hope the existing core still has enough to offer when some of the younger players begin to do more than tread water at the NHL level.Seems to me that the apparent goal this year of getting the kids icetime while keeping the core intact is to get through the cap crunch and provide a better base from which to work from next season when the cap will skyrocket.