Dear Abbey: Reacting to Your Fixes for Your Favorite NHL Team

Welcome to another edition of Dear Abbey. I don't give life advice like the real Dear Abby, but I do talk about hockey.

The Stanley Cup Final has begun, and unless you're a fan of the Tampa Bay Lightning or the Montreal Canadiens, your team is already on the golf course instead of playing for a title. Better luck next year.

This week, we asked readers to play armchair general manager and send in their suggestions on how they would fix their teams. Some of you wanted blockbuster deals. A few of you wanted more physicality and less elite talent, which is strange because I don't know one general manager who would ever say, "We have too much high-end talent on this team. I'd better get rid of some!"

Being a general manager is difficult. This isn't fantasy hockey, and there are more than just salary-cap constraints. These are human beings with feelings and families being traded to new cities or signed to contracts. And there is that whole player development part of the job.

Plus, the salary cap is difficult to manage. The New York Rangers had a ton of dead money on their books this season. Somehow, the Lightning are under the cap for the Cup but in reality, they should be about $30 million over it. Julien BriseBois clearly aced cap class in GM school.

So let's get into these ideas and see whether we can fix some of your teams.

Three-team trade:

PHI receives Matt Dumba

MIN receives Jack Eichel

BUF receives Nolan Patrick, Jordan Greenway, Matthew Boldy, 2021 first-round pick (PIT), 2021 second-round pick (PHI) and 2021 third-round pick (MIN)

Philly gets the defenseman they need (plus the current GM drafted Dumba and signed him to his current contract), Buffalo gets a top-tier prospect, draft capital, a player with some upside in Patrick and a good NHL forward in Greenway. Wild get Eichel to keep Kaprizov happy and hopefully win a playoff round. 

(@tommy_mccann66)

I'm all for a three-team trade. I like the excitement and the chaos. I always root for chaos. I don't necessarily see this happening because NHL general managers don't operate this way, but Buffalo Sabres captain Jack Eichel is the key to the trade market this season. Once he moves, others will as well. Minnesota Wild defenseman Matt Dumba might one of the bigger dominoes to fall too.

Also, I appreciate the effort of going on CapFriendly to find all of the correct picks. The Minnesota Wild does, in fact, own Pittsburgh's first-round pick in 2021. And Philadelphia Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher was the GM in Minnesota when Dumba signed that contract.

I like the idea of putting Eichel next to Kirill Kaprizov. He needs an elite center to skate with, and that would significantly improve the Minnesota lineup and possibly give it an edge in a postseason series.

However, Buffalo is getting, like, a lot in that trade. I did lay out a possible road map of sorts in an edition of Dear Abbey a few weeks ago, and this follows that template and then some. It's too many picks and too many players. Sure, Buffalo general manager Kevyn Adams would love that trade, but I don't think the other teams would.

I like where your head is, but it's too much going back to Buffalo.

I would go hard after Seth Jones and expose Torey Krug. Trade Vladimir Tarasenko, Vince Dunn and Zach Sanford. Use cap space for Jones and a couple of speedy forecheckers. We want to be hard to play against and not necessarily lighting up the highlight reels. 

(@sdaughtery13)

Fans seem to think St. Louis Blues winger Vladimir Tarasenko is done after three shoulder surgeries, and they want him gone. Too bad for them considering he has a no-trade clause. As for exposing Krug, he's an effective defenseman, and the team just made a big financial commitment, so I don't see them exposing him in the expansion draft. Vince Dunn, a defenseman, and Zach Sanford are pending restricted free agents, so they're still young and cheap. You need guys who are young and cheap to be able to manage the cap.

This notion that teams need to be hard to play against instead of possessing elite talent is a fallacy. Look at the two teams in the Stanley Cup Final: The Lightning have a ton of high-end skill players up front and on the blue line and still manage to play a physical, gritty game thanks to players like Blake Coleman. All of that talent and physicality is pretty tough to play against.

The Habs have players like Shea Weber, one of the league's best defensemen, and Tyler Toffoli, a natural-born goal scorer.

You don't think Tampa Bay got here by just being all grit and sandpaper? It's had plenty of highlight-reel plays from Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point.

The Blues were outplayed by a faster, deeper Colorado Avalanche team. This trade doesn't fix anything.

Buy out Martin Jones, sign a free-agent goalie, make a deal with Seattle to take Marc-Edouard Vlasic's contract. Trade a winger (Kevin Labanc) for a 3C. Better goaltending, cap flexibility and Tomas Hertl, Logan Couture and a new center down the middle. Also, fire Bob Boughner and hire Bruce Boudreau. 

(@rickcorreia)

Bruce Boudreau is such a great guy, and I'd love to see him back behind a bench again. He was one of the first coaches I ever covered in Anaheim, and I got to see up close how his easygoing demeanor was effective. He had an open-door policy and used his leadership group, especially captain Ryan Getzlaf, to communicate with younger players.

However, I think the San Jose Sharks like Bob Boughner. What they may be looking at is a "reset" like the one the Canadiens recently underwent. General manager Marc Bergevin was not getting rid of Shea Weber or goalie Carey Price, and as long as they were around, the team would compete.

Trading Kevin Labanc and getting rid of Marc-Edouard Vlasic wouldn't make as big of a difference as getting in a quality goaltender. There is no question the Sharks absolutely need a goaltender and will probably have to buy out Jones. I'm not sure the free-agent route is the way to go, though.

They can make a play for someone like Tuukka Rask, Pekka Rinne or go younger with Frederik Andersen. But spending a lot of money on a goalie over the age of 30 rarely works out well. If Doug Wilson can swing a trade for a younger goalie and maybe get a veteran on a short-term contract, that would bridge the gap until Alexei Melnichuk, their best goalie prospect, is ready.

Buffalo trade: Jack Eichel

L.A. Kings trade: Alex Turcotte, Gabriel Vilardi, 2022 first-round pick, 2021 and 2023 second-round picks

(@yuhlyuh)

Readers, why are you trying to just give away all of the picks and prospects to Buffalo? That is entirely too much for one player. Vilardi, a first-round pick and a fourth-liner maybe, but this wouldn't be a good trade for the Los Angeles Kings in the long run.

Eichel would work well with that Los Angeles roster. Putting him behind Anze Kopitar would give the Kings some formidable punch up the middle. But the team finally has its prospect pipeline flowing again after years of barren cabinets.

It's tough to manage player development when a team is in win-now mode, and that's something a general manager has to consider when making trades. They have to ask whether they are solving a problem now by creating a bigger one in the future?

Trading away Turcotte, Vilardi and so many picks would absolutely create a bigger problem in the future. The 2021 and 2022 drafts are going to be deep. Los Angeles might have to give up some draft capital in a trade for Eichel, but by dealing away two prospects and three draft picks, general manager Rob Blake would be hamstrung down the road.

Part of the reason the Kings are in the midst of a rebuild is because they didn't have the organizational talent needed to sustain their success past the 2014 season.

OK, trade Morgan Rielly in a swap for either Dougie Hamilton or Seth Jones. After, trade Mitch Marner for Jack Eichel and Sam Reinhart, and let Zach Hyman walk. And also, think of a way to snag Dahlin while he's still at low value. 

(@aaronwa15)

First of all, a one-for-one trade of defenseman Morgan Rielly for Seth Jones or Dougie Hamilton would be exciting, but it's not going to happen. The Columbus Blue Jackets are rebuilding or resetting or whatever you want to call it, so they'll need some pieces to build around, meaning young players, prospects or draft picks. 

It's going to take more than Mitch Marner to get Jack Eichel. So it's going to take a lot more to get Eichel and center Sam Reinhart. 

The Maple Leafs might need to let winger Zach Hyman walk because of salary-cap issues. Someone will likely offer him a contract in the $5 million-6 million range, and unless he's willing to take a discount, he could end up somewhere like Colorado. 

Rasmus Dahlin? Um, sure. OK. Go find a way to get him, but he's not likely to be a player Buffalo gives up because the 2018 first overall pick is only 21. Buffalo rushed him, as it did with many prospects, and it stunted his development, but he's young, cost-effective and can still develop into a key blue-line piece. 

This fixes nothing, but it's definitely wild!

Put my star player on injured reserve to hide his cap hit and then bring him back for my Stanley Cup run.

(@xxBobLoblaw)

This was snarky. I love snark.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman was asked about the Lightning's cap situation Monday prior to the start of Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. His answer was basically this: They didn't break any rules. They found loopholes and exploited them by stashing Nikita Kucherov on injured reserve all season to avoid the cap hit before activating him for the playoffs. 

Will it result in some sort of rule change? Who knows, but Bettman could decide to make a rule saying that a player has to played in X number of games to be eligible for the postseason in order to prevent other teams from circumventing the cap. Had the league forced Kucherov to return in April or even May, the situation might have looked different. 

I'm sure other general managers aren't happy with how BriseBois handled his salary-cap situation, but Bettman was correct in that assessment. The Lightning technically didn't do anything wrong. BriseBois' maneuvering could probably be considered as bending—but not breaking—the rules.