sreekers

"Love the Game First, Avs Second"

Gillette, WY • United States • 29 Years Old • Male

Lets Talk Trade, Again. Plus Adrian Dater's take.

OK, first off: I don’t often respond to stupid trade rumors from other hockey “news” blogs – which I realize is a complete redundancy in terms.
But please, stop it with these “Duchene and O’Reilly to Atlanta for Kovalchuk” and “O’Reilly and Liles and Wilson and half the Denver Mint for a couple of underachieving Philadelphia Flyers” rumors.
Repeat after me: the Avalanche is not trading Matt Duchene or Ryan O’Reilly. It’s not going to happen. It’s especially not going to happen for a guy like Ilya Kovalchuk or any other guy in the last year of a contract, and the salary demands for his next deal are said to begin at $11 million per year. The Avalanche has played this game before, but they don’t play that game anymore.
They are NOT trading their young, up-and-coming stars for high-dollar guys who may flee after a few months. Won’t happen.
Same goes for a rumored deal of O’Reilly and Wilson and Liles to Philly for Jeff Carter and Scott Hartnell and a pick. Won’t happen.

OK? Now, with regard to Liles: something could happen with him. And if not, possibly
something with Wilson. But not O’Reilly or Duchene. They are going nowhere. Trust me. Would the Avs take Kovalchuk for O’Reilly straight up, with the knowledge they’d be able to re-sign him? Yeah probably. But Atlanta would want a whole lot more than O’Reilly and Colorado is not going to mortgage the whole team for one guy.

The reason why something might happen with Liles or a Wilson is because the Avs will have a very tough choice soon, when Kyle Cumiskey comes back from an ankle sprain. Somebody is going to have to sit from the Avs’ current top 6 to make room for Cumiskey, and it would be very difficult to justify sitting Ryan Wilson the way he’s playing right now. The Avs would have an extra D-man who might bring something nice in return – maybe another big winger, something that would be nice to have on the current Burgundy and Blue roster? – and Liles is an obvious choice to think about moving. Problem is, he’s got a big ticket contract (second year of a four-year, $16.4 million deal) and teams might be leery. Then again, he’s still a young “offensive defenseman” with some previous success, so somebody probably would/will bite.

But the last thing the Avs are going to do is trade young forwards for older, more expensive forwards – especially guys who can become unrestricted free agents after this year.

-Adrian Dater, Denver Post, All Things Avs

In looking at Dater's Blog we see some things that obviously come in to play here. First off is Liles. He has a big contract and in my mind I thought it was a god signing. A limited movement clause is also a big part of that contract. However, this talk scares me because every time he is mentioned in the rumor mill, his play slips a lot. Purposeful, maybe, but doubtful.

I also don't like it from the PP end of the deal. He was very good up until his injury which is another problem from the trade perspective, passing the physical.

Ryan Wilson needs to stay in an Avs uniform. Physical defenseman who truthfully deserves to keep his roster spot. Big hits at the blue line have added an element to the Avs game that we haven't seen in quite a while.

The only way we trade Liles is if we can get a pure goal scorer to play with Duchene. Jeff Carter's name has been all over the place, but I don't know if that is what Philly wants to do. What other goal scorer's are rumored to be on the market? Who would be a fit for the Avs? Who would be a fit without giving up a major pick, or a major prospect?

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