The Anze Kopitar Trade Rumour

Recently a trade rumour surrounding Kopitar was presented. The trade was a three way trade involving Chicago, Ottawa and Los Angeles. In the trade the Los Angeles kings would send Kopitar to Chicago, in exchange they would receive Gerber and Mesjaros and finally Ottawa would obtain Nikolai Khabibulin.

Now this rumoured trade doesn't look bad from the perspectives of Ottawa and Chicago. However in Los Angeles's eyes this trade is wretched. This trade would set the Kings back even further in their development. Giving away Kopitar for 34 year old goalie whose posted great regular season stats but has yet to deliver in the playoffs wouldn't make any sense.

His age would prevent him from keeping the Kings crease warm while the team awaited on the arrival of Bernier who by my estimation is approximately 2 to 3 years away from maintaining a place on the Kings squad. In the other portion of the trade  Mesjaros is a fantastic blueliner who would help the kings immediately he's also very young and has posted very good numbers in 3 years in the league. But Mesjaros and Gerber are not enough to land an elite center like Kopitar. Mesjaros is a great defenceman however he is not an elite defenceman warranting the value of Kopitar.

When you examine the salaries that also would be traded you come to realize how ridiculous this trade would be. Kopitar has one more year left on his contract paying him 955,867, after which I'm sure the Kings will use their large cap space to lock him up to a long term deal.

Mesjaros just signed a new deal paying him 2.76 million per year and Gerber is currently signed a to a contract paying him 3.7 million per season. Although this trade would bring the Kings closer to hitting the cap floor  immediately it would do nothing to help the team in the long term and they would come up well short of adding value to a team so desperately seeking value.

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