Winners, Losers of the Winnipeg Jets and Buffalo Sabres' Trade for Evander Kane

On Wednesday, the Winnipeg Jets and Buffalo Sabres authored the biggest trade of the NHL season: 

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#NHLJets acquire Myers, Stafford, Lemieux, Armia and a 2015 1st Rd. pick from Buffalo in exchange for Kane, Bogosian, and Kasdorf.

— Winnipeg Jets (@NHLJets) February 11, 2015"

It's the kind of deal trade watchers live for, a true blockbuster and a real hockey deal, not a boring salary dump. It's a deal that comes on the heels of months of speculation as to the futures of Evander Kane and Tyler Myers, a trade that involves a bunch of young players signed long term and sees some really significant prospects trading hands. 

Who wins, and who loses in this trade? 

Winner: Drew Stafford

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There's an immediate element of winning/losing here. Drew Stafford and Tyler Myers are leaving a lousy Sabres team and now suddenly joining a team bound for the postseason, while Zach Bogosian goes from being invested in a playoff race to playing out the string in Buffalo. In that sense, Stafford and Myers are obviously winners and Bogosian obviously a loser.

But there's a silver lining here for Stafford. Unlike the other NHL players in this deal, his contract is up at the end of the year; he's a pending unrestricted free agent, and while he hasn't been bad, the last few years in Buffalo haven't done his stock any favours. 

Now, he's joining a Winnipeg team that has an obvious and immediate need for him. This is a chance to make an impression on both the Jets (there's a pretty decent case for them to re-sign him) and on the NHL as a whole. If he can help Winnipeg make the postseason or better still impress in the playoffs it should certainly be of help to his agent come summer when he's looking for a shiny new contract. 

It's a far better opportunity than he was going to get in Buffalo. 

Loser: Other Teams in the Connor McDavid Race

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With Evander Kane done for the year, what the Sabres just did in terms of immediate NHL players was deal Drew Stafford and Tyler Myers for Zach Bogosian. The Bogosian/Myers side of the exchange is a tough one to characterize because they're both big, right-shooting defencemen who were taken early in the 2008 draft, but they're reasonably comparable in a lot of ways. 

That means the Sabres are down one of their better forwards with no replacement in sight, which makes them worse for the immediate future.

It's also a sign of what's going to happen to other pending free agents. Buffalo has a bunch of them, and most of those are also bound for address changes prior to the trade deadline—once the Sabres move them the team will incredibly get even worse than it's been so far this season.  

Winner: Tim Murray

Bill Wippert/Getty Images

The toughest part of any rebuild isn't losing and collecting young talent; it's turning that young talent into players who can win NHL games. 

Sabres general manager Tim Murray knows this and expressed it in a recent interview with WGR 550 (transcript via Die By The Blade):

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We can't be up in the clouds with Hockey's Future and ISS and all these outside organizations that deem us to be the best organization in hockey for draft picks or prospects, because reality says some of these guys won't play [in the NHL]. In saying that, we do know we've got good young players coming. We had a good draft last year, and they're not close to playing—other than Sam [Reinhart]—these guys need to go back to junior, these guys need to go to the AHL, but a couple of them will be good NHL players.

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The reason a team drafts players like Joel Armia and Brendan Lemieux is in the hopes that they will turn into players who can impact the NHL like Evander Kane. Murray cashed in a bunch of maybe for a demonstrably effective NHL winger, a winger who is both young and signed long-term who will help cut the "being terrible" part of the Sabres' rebuild short. 

Loser: Terrence Pegula's Wallet

Bill Wippert/Getty Images

It's easy to forget now, but when Tyler Myers originally signed his long contract with Buffalo the Sabres were so enchanted that they front-loaded the deal. Massively.

NHLNumbers.com notes that Myers was paid $18 million in actual salary over the first two years of his contract, which means that while Myers has a $5.5 million cap hit he's actually only going to earn a little over $15 million in salary over the next four years.

In contrast, the same source shows that Zach Bogosian's deal escalates over time. His cap hit may be roughly $400,000 less than Myers, but he'll be making $22 million over the next four years. Evander Kane's salary ($6.0 million annually) also exceeds his cap hit ($5.25 million annually). 

It shouldn't be lost in all of this that the Winnipeg Jets just saved a pile of money, and Sabres owner Terry Pegula is footing the bill. 

Winner: All the Prospects the Sabres Didn't Trade

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The Buffalo Sabres sent a boatload of futures back to the Jets in the Kane deal. Joel Armia was a first-round draft pick in 2011, Brendan Lemieux was a high second-round selection last year and of course there was a first-round draft pick involved too. 

But the flip side is that the Sabres are dealing from a position of strength. When we looked at the team's prospects this fall, Armia ranked just fourth on the list, and Lemieux barely cracked the top 10. Buffalo has piles of young talent in the NHL, in the AHL and then there are a ton of guys still in the pipeline who haven't made the jump to the pro ranks yet.

Clearing out Armia and Lemieux (and that draft pick) opens up some opportunities for all of those prospects working their way up the organizational ladder. 

Loser: Fringe Players in the Jets' System

Marianne Helm/Getty Images

Competition for jobs, playing time and contracts just got tougher in Winnipeg.

Every NHL team is constrained in the number of players it can sign (it can't have more than 50 players under contract at any one time) and also has a practical matter in the number of jobs available in the NHL and AHL.

The addition of Joel Armia—a 2011 first-round pick who is a solid AHL player and still has time to find his way to the majors—adds another competitor for playing time in the minors, for NHL recalls and of course for space on that 50-man list. Brendan Lemieux isn't quite there yet, but he's playing well in junior and is a high-end prospect whose development will certainly be prioritized by the Jets.

For a still-young AHLer in the Jets' system or a 19-year-old on the bubble for an NHL entry-level deal, life just got harder. 

Winner: Kevin Cheveldayoff

Dave Sandford/Getty Images

Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff is notoriously gun-shy when it comes to trades, so it was anyone's guess as to how he would handle the Evander Kane situation. He responded by authoring an incredible blockbuster and getting really good value for a player who was at the centre of a lot of off-ice drama and done for the year.

If we call the Zach Bogosian/Tyler Myers side of the trade a wash in terms of talent (we'll see how it works out; there isn't a clear advantage for either team there), he managed to secure not only a rental player (Drew Stafford) who could adequately fill the void left by Kane on the ice, but he also landed a bevy of prospects and picks who will help restock the Jets' system.

Those players aren't Kane, of course, but if Cheveldayoff can get Stafford signed to an extension he has the chance to make this deal really work for Winnipeg. 

Loser: Vancouver Canucks

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Evander Kane is a Vancouver product who played his junior hockey with the Giants, and every time his name has come up in trade rumours the Canucks have been discussed as a possible trading partner. It's no different this time, as ESPN's Pierre LeBrun reports: 

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Canucks went down path on Kane deal. Were still talking to Jets last night. Wpg phoned Van this a.m. to say they were making a bigger deal

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Vancouver wasn't exactly motivated solely by sentiment here. The team is particularly weak at left wing, meaning that Kane would have helped positionally. The forward corps is on the older side as a rule, meaning Kane, 23, would have injected some much-needed youth. He would also have added the power forward presence the Canucks have been trying to find for a long time. 

Winner: Evander Kane

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It's become clear over the last few weeks that if the dynamic between Evander Kane and the rest of the Winnipeg Jets had ever worked it worked no longer. Kane clearly wanted and needed a fresh start, and now he's going to get it. 

Buffalo is perhaps less of an ideal destination than a market where he could be safely anonymous—the Florida Panthers would have been a nice fit—but it's certainly less of a fishbowl than Winnipeg was. And given the price the Sabres paid and the way Kane's age fits him into a rebuilding group, it's clear that the team's management believes in the player. 

He'll be given every opportunity to shine, and he'll undoubtedly be motivated to make the most of it.