Silver Seven Sens wants to know who you would trade for Ilya Kovalchuk from the Atlanta Thrashers.My answer? No one.
Look, Kovalchuk is a talented player, of that there is no doubt. He even isn't "enigmatic" like Alex Kovalev is.
There are three problems with this idea. The first problem is he is in a contract year and he is going UFA over the summer. He is the very definition of the word "rental". In the unlikely event he does sign with Ottawa, it will be for big bucks, which will come at the cost of someone else.
The second is that right now Atlanta is very much the definition of the term "blow up your team" and so won't be looking for short-term skilled acquisitions -- they want more picks and prospects, something to rebuild around for longer term success.
The third is that such a trade does absolutely nothing to solve the issues in the defense corps.
The real question is: why are you considering this? Do you seriously think that adding Kovalchuk to the team, with the resulting immediate team loss of some kind of talent going the other way plus the inevitable combination of picks and prospects, is going to make this team go deep this post season? Because if you are not, you are wasting your time.
The time to sell your long term future to rent some additional skill is when you are making a run.
The Citizen has an article detailing an allegedly sorry state of Ottawa's farm system, dumping responsibility for the whole mess on previous GM John Muckler. Basically the conclusion is the larder is bare. If the future of the hockey club is in the farm team, then the Senators are still looking down, not up.
The Senators are still struggling a bit with high-priced talent that they can't use. This is the same generalized argument I made when I first proposed trading Dany Heatly. These players -- I am thinking of Kovalev, Spezza, Fisher, Michalek, and yes even his amazingness Daniel Alfredsson -- are assets that we can't leverage properly. As amazing as all these guys
I know I've been beating the drum about this less this year. That's been a deliberate choice. I've decided that even if Brian Murray doesn't know what he's doing, he's the man in charge and we should let him do his job.
Look at the state of the league right now. It is rare to see repeat contenders. (OK, last year was a bad example.) The consensus is that there are two teams which have to succeed this year if they are going to -- I am thinking of Chicago and San Jose here.
Chicago especially is going to be in a bad way because they have been blessed with three highly talented players all at the same time, all of which will be expecting big bucks next year at contract time. Once they lose some of these guys, and/or have to gut the rest of the team to keep these three guys, they are going to be rebuilding, no question about it.
See also Montreal, which was set up to peak last year for their centennial. This year, where are they? Nowhere. OK Montreal blew up prematurely for reasons nobody really understands, but this team now is going back to basics, back to rebuilding.
This I think is the reality that Senators fans have to face. Unless you can find a lot of guys who will play over their pay grades, or a lot of fresh young (cheap) talent, you won't have a solid chance because there will always some other team which either does have a lot of guys who play over their pay grades or a lot of fresh young (cheap) talent.
Our eyes should be on eventual success, not just passing some arbitrary bar this year. Trading for Kovalchuk now would give us a definite edge while chasing a playoff spot this year. However, it would cost us even more from our already depleted future.
