Teams may take action sooner than we think
Dave Pagnotta joined Sirius XM NHL Network Radio’s Power Play with Steve Kouleas and Craig Button for the fourth episode and was asked when we might see teams pull the trigger on trades this season.
Transcribed by NHLRumors.com
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Craig Patton: “Okay, so we’re over the Pittsburgh Penguins. Sorry, David, we’re not going over the Pittsburgh Penguins. We’re over Sidney Crosby. You expect at what point, Pittsburgh is just one of those teams, we hear about Brian Rust. We hear about Rikard Recker. We know Kyle Dubas wants to push the young guys out there because that’s what they have to do.” Where do you think the dividing line is for these teams in the league, with Rasmus Andersen in Calgary, making these players potentially more prominent in terms of trade negotiations?”
Dave Pannotta: “Everyone knows Thanksgiving in America, and that’s traditionally a time when teams feel comfortable fully evaluating their teams. I think it’s a combination, especially in recent years, in the salary cap era, where teams, yes, they mark it, but they can’t do much because everyone is against the salary cap. This year is a little different, and I’m curious to see how some of these clubs utilize their space.
Typically, teams wait, they push, they try to accumulate more cap space by adding a player late in the season. Yes, we all know the salary cap game has changed a bit, especially when it comes to the playoffs and you have to freeze your roster or your lineup, games have to be within the salary cap, this, that, etc. But it still gives teams and franchises more flexibility to do that this year, and many teams are under the cap and have extra playing space sooner than in the past.
I think depending on how things go with some of these clubs, I think we all know which direction Pittsburgh is going to go. For example, if the Calgary Flames, and you mentioned Rasmus Andersen, if things didn’t work out in the first 15-20 games of the season, would they have been more serious about negotiating earlier in the year? That’s what I’m curious about.
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I think some of these teams are willing to at least escalate some of these negotiations sooner rather than later. Eventually, it dawned on them that they were the ones who had to pull the trigger. We expect a busy offseason. We got nothing. So obviously it takes two to tango. These people are going to have to do it; these managers are going to have to decide when to finally pull the trigger.
But I do expect that in talking to people around the league, it sounds like teams are more willing to have more serious negotiations earlier in the season because a lot of teams have cap wiggle room
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