Buying and Selling the NHL's Biggest Offseason Gambles
Every offseason teams will roll the dice and take some major gambles in constructing their roster.
It could be the quality and quantity of assets given up in a trade, a long-term contract for a free agent that might not be worth it, or trying to find the right head coach to bring everything together.
Some of them will work out.
Some of them will fail.
Here we are going to take a look at five of the biggest gambles made by NHL teams this offseason and whether or not you should buy or sell them working out.
When it comes to the type of gambles we are looking at, we are focussing on larger contracts with term (so no one-year, low-risk deals), teams that did not address a major position of need or any kind of move that has a significant impact on the way a team plays (like a coaching hire).
Columbus Hiring Mike Babcock
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Columbus had one of the weirdest offseason performances of any team in the NHL.
After being one of the worst teams in the league a year ago, they spent the summer operating like a team that has a chance to win right now.
They traded for Ivan Provorov from Philadelphia, landed Damon Severson from New Jersey and signed him to a long-term contract extension. After all that, they then made the biggest risk of them all by hiring Mike Babcock to be their next head coach.
The defensive changes are small risks on their own. There is some question as to how good either player is and what sort of impact they can have. It all seems like a desperate general manager trying to do anything he can sneak into a Wild Card spot to save his job.
But the hiring of Babcock is an entirely different level of risk.
Off the ice, he brings a ton of baggage with him given his treatment of past players and the pushback he received toward the end of his tenure with the Toronto Maple Leafs. He seemed to create a dreadful environment for players and there isn't much evidence that we can point to indicating he has changed.
On the ice, his team's have consistently disappointed since he went to back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals with the Detroit Red Wings in 2008 and 2009.
Going back to 2010 a Babcock-coached team has never finished higher than third place in its own division while winning just a single playoff series. It hasn't exactly been a great resume for the past 12 years. If it didn't work in Detroit and Toronto where the rosters were significantly better than this Columbus roster, what makes anybody think it is going to work here?
Verdict: Sell
Penguins Re-Sign Tristan Jarry
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Entering the offseason it seemed like a foregone conclusion that the Penguins were going to move in a different direction with their goalie situation.
Goaltending has been a significant Achilles' heel for the past three years. Tristan Jarry has had trouble staying on the ice for the past two years and when he has been on the ice he has been wildly inconsistent, arguably even more so than your typical goalie.
Despite being an All-Star on two different occasions, he has also fallen on his face in big moments.
Instead of making a change, the Penguins brought Jarry back on a five-year contract that will pay him $5.3 million per season. That is a significant investment and a sign that the team has total faith in him as its starter.
In defense of the Penguins, Jarry was probably the best free-agent goalie available in a very thin class.
They also didn't (and do not) have a ton of trade assets that could have landed them a clear upgrade in the trade market, which probably eliminated any chance of a trade for somebody like, say, Connor Hellebuyck.
Jarry has also done enough in his career too to make a team believe that he could still be an above-average starter if he can just stay healthy.
Bringing him back on a one-or two-year "prove it" deal would have actually made some sense.
But again, this is far from a prove-it deal. This is a "you are proven" deal.
You can't really predict injuries. Just because a player has been injured several times over the past year or two (as has been the case with Jarry) does not mean they are going to be injured in the future. And the goalie market itself is always a total guessing game when it comes to production. That makes pretty much any long-term deal a major gamble.
There is a chance that Jarry stays healthy and puts all of his talent together and plays like the All-Star he has been in the past. There is also a chance he gets hurt again, misses significant time and is the same inconsistent goalie that has helped hold the Penguins back over the past three years.
Verdict: Sell
Ottawa Signs Joonas Korpisalo
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Ottawa is another team that entered the offseason with a major question mark in goal and made a wild choice in its attempt to answer it.
The Senators have done a lot of good work in recent years when it comes to rebuilding their roster.
It is one of the best young teams in the league and is quickly back on the rise.
The young forward core is swimming in talent, while all of the major players are signed to long-term deals that should qualify as team-friendly. They also made a major splash at the trade deadline to add Jakob Chychrun to a defense that already has Thomas Chabot, Artem Zub and Jake Sanderson to build around.
They just need a goalie.
They badly swung and missed last offseason when they traded Filip Gustavsson to the Minnesota Wild in a one-for-one deal that landed them Cam Talbot. It turned out to be one of the most lopsided trades of the year as Gustavsson took over the starting job in Minnesota and was one of the most productive goalies in the league.
Talbot was the exact opposite. He struggled and it was one of the biggest reasons the Senators fell short of the playoffs again.
This offseason the dice roll comes in the form of Joonas Korpisalo on a five-year, $25 million deal.
Korpisalo played well at times during the 2022-23 season, especially after he was traded to the Los Angeles Kings, but his overall track record as an NHL starting goalie is all over the map, and more often than not puts him below what you would want to see for a contending team.
In two of the past three seasons, his save percentage has finished below the .890 mark, while only three of his nine seasons in the NHL have resulted in a save percentage higher than .905. He has also never played more than 40 games in an entire season at any point in his career.
Not only do the Senators not know how he will perform over the course of a full 82-game season where he is expected to be the full-time starter, they really don't even know how well he will perform at all.
And they are putting a ton of faith in him to be the goalie to help get them back to the playoffs.
Verdict: Sell
Kings Trade for Pierre-Luc Dubois
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The Kings' trade for Pierre-Luc Dubois is one of the more fascinating moves of the offseason and is the confluence where several different gambles are all meeting.
Los Angeles traded Gabriel Vilardi, Alex Iafallo, Rasmus Kupari and a 2024 second-round pick to the Jets for Dubois' RFA rights, and then signed him to an eight-year, $68 million contract.
That is a lot to give up and pay for a good, but not great player at a position where the Kings did not really have a pressing need.
The Kings already have Anze Kopitar, Philip Danault and Quinton Byfield at the center, and had far more bigger needs in goal and scoring depth on the wings. They not only did not address the need in goal, but they also traded some of the wing depth they did have by dealing Vilardi and Iafallo.
All of that for a player that has forced his way out of his past two cities and has never scored more than 30 goals in a season.
That's not to say that Dubois is a bad player or a bad fit. It just didn't seem like the best possible match given what the Kings roster already looked like and still needed.
But it still has a chance to be a good match. Even though Dubois doesn't produce like a star, you could do a lot worse than 25 goals, 60 points, and the type of strong two-way play that Dubois can provide. It also makes the Kings one of the deepest teams in the league at center -- a good position to be deep at -- and creates a lot of matchup problems down the middle. It also gives them an in-house replacement at center in the future when Kopitar calls it a career and retires.
There are some things to be a little curious about with this move. But there is also a lot to like. At the end of the day, Dubois is a good player, the best player involved in that trade, and the Kings have him signed for a long time.
Verdict: Buy
Buffalo Doesn't Add a Veteran Goalie
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The Buffalo Sabres are going to enter the 2023-24 season with real expectations for the first time in more than a decade.
They took a huge step forward this past season and fell just one point short of ending their 12-year playoff drought.
Anything short of a playoff berth this season should be a massive disappointment given the talent on the roster and the progress that has been made.
They have a forward group that is oozing with talent, they have two No. 1 overall picks on defense that are just starting to hit their prime in Rasmus Dahlin and Owen Power, and they have one of the best goalie prospects in hockey that might be ready for the big time in Devon Levi.
Levi's presence might be the biggest reason why Buffalo did not do more to address its goaltending position this offseason.
Goaltending was the single biggest issue the Sabres had a year ago and if they could have managed even average play in net they might have cruised to a playoff spot. The rest of the team was that dynamic and that good.
They just couldn't get a save.
They also did nothing to really address the position this offseason. At least not yet. They didn't bring in anybody in free agency. They made no trade for a proven veteran. They seem content to roll forward with their young duo of Levi and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen, along with stop-gap veterans Eric Comrie and Dustin Tokarski.
Given how bad the Sabres were in goal last season that is a significant roll of the dice.
But I also don't hate it. The Sabres have almost no money invested in the position, creating a ton of salary-cap flexibility elsewhere on the roster. The Sabres still have more than $6 million in salary-cap space to play with and they do have a potential starting goalie in Levi. And one that has a pretty significant upside as well.
Projecting goalies -- especially young goalies -- is always going to involve some guesswork, but if a team gets it right that is an enormous advantage to have over your opponents when constructing your roster.
If Levi is ready to be the guy and ends up being the guy this season, the Sabres are going to be sitting in a very good position.
Verdict: Buy
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