With the Guentzel trade, the Penguins were rumored to be asking for Brennan Othmann or even Gabe Perreault. At the time I was firmly in the ‘don’t trade in Perreault, but do trade in Othmann’ camp.
I was in small company when it came to the willingness to move Othmann. The logic was that Othmann would have delivered talent for years, while Guentzel would have delivered for a few months and then signed elsewhere. At the time I understood the logic. Now? I think teams should trade any prospect they don’t consider generational (if they’re in win-now mode).
Look around the league and it’s not hard to see why I have this opinion, although many here at BSB were fine with moving the kid. The Rangers change prospects far too often and that’s a separate problem, but this time they held on to Brennan Othmann in the hope that he would be a middle-six player for the long term. Instead, he has gone 37 professional games without a goal. Mike Sullivan seems all over him, and for good reason. Othmann just wasn’t that good.
Now the Rangers will get little to no value from a player who could have played a major role in a trade a year or two ago. This is a great example of how the complaint that the Rangers trade prospects too often doesn’t hold water, because unfortunately too many prospects just don’t make it.
Look at Brad Lambert of the Winnipeg Jets, Pavel Mintyukov of the Anaheim Ducks, or a plethora of players around the league who have fallen out of favor with their respective organizations. For every home run prospect, there seem to be fifteen who just don’t cut it. With that kind of volatility, why take the risk?
Here I want to make it clear that I am not proposing to be a fool. Of course, if there is a generational perspective, keep it. If there’s a prospect that teams don’t value at all, there’s no point in moving them. But if there’s a valuable prospect who scores as a top-six prospect or a second-pair defender, why isn’t that an expendable prospect?
The goal of the competing teams is to win the Stanley Cup. I recognize that there is an additional goal of being a team that continually competes, but a Stanley Cup is a Stanley Cup, and simply trading a guy who puts up 55 or even 65 points in the NHL is not someone you can’t replace.
Even then, if you trade a Brennan Othmann, your system is bound to throw you a surprise like a Will Cuylle or Noah Laba.
All of this is to say that when the Rangers inevitably become contenders again, I’ll be firmly in the “trade the prospects” camp. I’d much rather risk losing a future talent than fail to put in the chips for a potential Stanley Cup season.
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