The trades of major minute players so far are the following:
- Kyle Palmieri and Travis Zajac for two AHLers, a 1st and a conditional 4th that could be a 3rd
- David Savard and an AHLer in a salary retention trade with a third team for a 1st, a 3rd and a 4th
- Nick Foligno and an AHL/NHL tweener in a similar trade for a 1st and two 4ths
- Taylor Hall and Curtis Lazar for Anders Bjork and a 2nd with full salary retention on Hall/
The Savard and Foligno trades have identical form, while the other two mix in actual NHL-level players to complicate the picture. Nonetheless, the narrative will boil down to, likely correctly, as thee trades for fist-round picks and one for a second.
All the picks are likely to be about the same level in the draft, so the firsts are 25 or worse, and the Boston second is likely 55 or worse.
There are two ways to look at this. Boston got a bargain:
It seems like a good time to point out that Taylor Hall currently has the seventh-worst single season shooting percentage among all NHL players since 2013-14. The #bruins may be purchasing some regression to the mean here along with his talent at a bargain cost.
— Chris Johnston (@reporterchris) April 12, 2021
Kyle Dubas got taken:
Everyone all over the place.
No one seems to have too much to say about the Palmieri deal, and Savard is considered the best player on that list up there, likely correctly, and the fact Tampa had to pay more than anyone else did for retention is a minor quibble.
Some of the belief that the Leafs trade is the outlier is based on player evaluation of Foligno vs Hall that’s certainly debatable in the details, but it’s likely true that Hall has a good chance of making more of an impact overall, while at the same time Foligno is being heavily underrated because defensive forwards always are. There’s never a guarantee with any rental, of course.
Much of the bad feeling must be attributed to fans having wanted Hall instead of Foligno, but that’s beside the point, when just looking at the price. The NMC and Hall’s total control on who he was traded to complicates the picture, but it’s hard to assign a market effect to that fact.
No matter how you slice it, if you believe these trades form a market that should have consistent values for players as reflected in the picks traded for them, these four trades don’t form a coherent picture, and one of the Hall or Foligno trades has to be “wrong”. Which do you think it is?
Which trade is an overpay/underpay compared to the others?
| Hall is a bargain, and all the other GMs must have undervalued him while Dubas overpaid for Foligno | 275 |
| Hall is overrated by fans, and his value is truly lower than the others, while Dubas paid the going rate for a deadline rental | 455 |
Bonus question: how much difference to you think there is between the Leafs first and second this summer? Or put another way, if you think it’s an overpay, is that enough to sour your forever on the deal?