Former NHL GM: “I don’t know if they can get [a second round pick] for Hemsky”
10 years ago
Craig Button, the one-time general manager of the Calgary Flames, does not believe Ales Hemsky has much in the way of trade value. Barely any trade value at all, in point of fact.
The Quote
Here’s Button, as quoted by the Edmonton Journal’s Jim Matheson:
I don’t think there’s a market for him … I shouldn’t say there’s no market. But the salary cap is coming down to $64.3 million. He makes $5 million for one more year. Would the Oilers pick up half of that to trade him, 50-50 (with another team)? That would still free up $2.5 million in cap space for the Oilers. I don’t know if they can get something tangible in return for Hemsky. Andrew Cogliano got the Oilers a second-round draft (pick). I don’t know if they can get that for Hemsky.
Uh-huh
So, in Button’s scenario, the Oilers eat half of Hemsky’s salary and deal him to a team that will pay $2.5 million per season, and they can’t land a second-round draft pick?
For starters: if the Oilers somehow couldn’t get a second-round pick for a guy making $2.5 million who scores like Hemsky, than they may as well fire the general manager now because he’s hopeless. This link has a list of active players with similar scoring rates to Hemsky over the last five seasons (Hemsky, by the way, ranks 59th among NHL forwards over the last five years in points-per-game which is well above the pace of most second-line forwards).
It’s not a great list, but it really isn’t a bad one either. Joffrey Lupul was dealt in 2011 as part of a package for Francois Beauchemin; the Maple Leafs liked him enough to sign him to a five year extension worth more than $5 million and including a limited no-trade clause. Martin Erat was considered enough of a return for the Capitals to give up star prospect Filip Forsberg. There are other examples, too; Jaromir Jagr earned more of a return as a rental player at the deadline than Button is suggesting Hemsky would fetch at half his salary and for a full year.
Hemsky isn’t going to fetch a massive return – he likely won’t bring in a top-pairing defenceman or a power forward for the second line – but it’s lunacy to think he can’t fetch a second-round draft pick at a $2.5 million cap hit.
Recently around the Nation Network
There has been a lot of talk in Edmonton about the possibility of drafting Sean Monahan, but one of the problems for such aspirations is that the Calgary Flames pick before the Oilers, and he’s certainly a potential fit for that club as well. In Flames first round target: Sean Monahan, Kent Wilson looks at the numbers and the scouting reports; here’s part of what he had to say:
In some ways, Monahan’s scouting reports sounds a lot like recent CHL graduates Gabriel Landeskog and Sean Courturier, both of whom were considered more or less "NHL ready" right out of the draft because of their size and the completeness of their games. Neither guy has set the world on fire offensively in the NHL at this point, but both are already playing tough competition and surviving/thriving in the show as kids.
Click the link above to read the whole piece, or feel free check out some recent pieces here at Oilers Nation:
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