Welcome to the first "Transaction Reaction" segment of the blog. Each time there's a trade or signing of note, I'm going to analyze it, attempting to think it out from each GM's point of view. I don't profess to have any inside knowledge, this is just my brain attempting to process a deal from each side and sharing my thoughts.
On my way home from the Panthers-Islanders game Saturday, my Twitter feed informed me that the Ducks had acquired Kyle Cumiskey from the Avs for defenseman Jake Newton and a seventh round pick. Pretty minor deal, I thought. The Ducks are currently without Toni Lydman and Kurtis Foster, of course, so acquiring a defenseman to fill a void for a bit made sense to me. I then saw another note on the trade: Cumiskey had cleared waivers less than 24 hours before being traded to the Ducks.
Why would Anaheim trade for a player they could have claimed off waivers mere hours earlier? After thinking this out and having a nice conversation on Twitter with a Ducks fan and fellow aspiring GM about the issue, here's what I believe Anaheim GM Bob Murray was thinking:
By claiming Cumiskey off waivers, the only perceivable benefit that the Ducks garner is not having to send any type of compensation to Colorado (disregarding the fairly insignificant waiver fee).
But by trading for him, they gain several additional benefits:
1) If the Ducks had claimed Cumiskey, he would have required waivers again to be sent to the AHL (since he wouldn't have cleared them if he had been claimed). When Foster and Lydman come back, it's safe to assume Anaheim intends to send Cumiskey to Syracuse. By trading for Cumiskey after he cleared waivers, he remains waiver-exempt for 10 NHL games or 30 calendar days. If Anaheim gets healthy on defense in this roughly month-long time period, they can send Cumiskey down without risking losing him on waivers. This would not be the case if they had claimed him.
2) Anaheim is a relatively small-market team. Actual salaries matter to them, at least, much more than they do to the giants of the game. A team like the Rangers can afford to stash Sean Avery and Wade Redden in the minors. Anaheim probably can't. Jake Newton's AHL salary is $67,500 this season. By trading him for Cumiskey's $105,000, the Ducks only take on an additional $37,500 in actual salary, rather than $105,000 (note: cap hits aren't important here because the Ducks are under the upper limit, and AHL players are of course not included in any salary cap calculation).
3) By sending Colorado a player for Cumiskey, the Ducks don't have to take on an extra contract towards the 50-contract limit. CapGeek had the Ducks at 47 contracts before the trade. Claiming Cumiskey would mean that they would have been two away from the limit. Sending the Avalanche a spare part-type player means that they can keep some extra flexibility on their 50-contract quota without doing much damage to the depth of their system.
I believe that Bob Murray went through a very similar thought process when he decided to pick up a new defenseman for a short-term fix. Ultimately, he decided that trading a spare-part and a low draft pick was worth the benefits he got from not having to claim Kyle Cumiskey off waivers.
This is just one example of how even the most seemingly minor of transactions can matter tons to an NHL team's structure.
No comments:
Post a Comment