From the Oracle: The Stralman Trade

She peers into the water in order to find answers for our TML concerns












In ancient times, during periods of great uncertainty, difficulty and potential disaster, men would take long pilgrimages to oracles to seek their council. Throughout the ancient world there were numerous oracles (and prophets and sibyls) who all had personalized methods of discovering the will of the gods. Some oracles would retreat into a cave, light some...um...sacred herbs, sit in the smokey cave and wait for the gods to speak. Other oracles would dance or read tea leaves or retreat into the desert or paint pictures or make mini models or act out prophetic plays or be doomed to always tell the truth, but never be believed. Our favorite oracle would go out on a sunny day, sit down under the sacred tree and would listen to the wind blowing through the branches. Apparently Zeus--when he wasn't impregnating people--or other deities would whisper down the messages through the rustling of the leaves. The faithful oracle would then skip home and deliver the message to whomever asked her.

We here at TOV have our very own oracle (besides the great oracle) and here is what we asked her about yesterday's trade:

1. Why Stralman
2. Why Primeau
3. Will the pain of Leaf fandom ever heal?

She responded with was the usual antiquated prose style oracle pronouncement that we here at TOV have come to expect from our lovely prophetic lady:

Know ye better than I, fair fan? Burke's boulder has but begun to roll. Look to the new dawn and keep your eyes from the tower for any movement on the horizon.

So that was unhelpful. But luckily we had our legal experts and symbologists take a crack at it and this is what they are saying:

Stralman was a project. He was a potentially offensively gifted (love to hear it ding off that post) D-man, he was figuring out his positioning and when we sent him back down to the AHL he didn't blow anybodies hair back. He was unlikely to crack the team this next season--and if he did, it would be at the expense of White who seems to be buying what Wilson is selling. Also due to CBA fineprint he would have had to be exposed to waivers, and if he had been snatched we would have been screaming bloody murder (and we would have had to have read all the articles saying how we as fans overvalue our prospects. But as it stands we're now going to have to read the articles saying we gave up on a promising player from the same guys a year ago wrote how Stralman is not really a promising player.)

So it was either: Stralman makes the team, take a gamble on waivers or trade him. So we traded him. And wow, we got what we got for Antropylon and we got what we got for Kid Harvard. So that's pretty good for a kid who looks like a young Bill Gates

Why Primeau?

Dunno

Now, the Oracle did say say things about looking to the horizon and movement and new dawn and that kinda stuff. My guess is that this is setting the stage for a bigger deal. Now, obviously as previously posted here on TOV we feel that Kaberle and Pogge are on the list of players potentially on the way out. Now that we got a 4th line center in Primeau our guess is that one of either Stajan or Mitchell are on the hot seat. Stajan probably has more trade-value and he is less Burkian than Mitchell, so let's assume it's him.

So a potential package could be: Kaberle, Pogge, Stajan (and the new 2nd if we wanted). Hey, that's a pretty decent return. So lets plug that into the "team's needing a puckmoving guy" and multiply that by level of desperation to make the postseason and we're seeing such teams as LA, Columbus, Phoenix, St. Louis, Vancouver or Dallas (in that order too). Obviously we're looking at a top line player or big blue chip prospect coming back our way (with, hopefully, an offensive dman prospect project like Stralman too.) And if you are a team perennially on the outside looking in all the time, and you have a superstar forward (like LA have in Frolov and Brown, and like how Columbus have in Nash) that needs the puck from the backend, I seriously think you take a good hard look at Kaberle. Is he worth a Brayden Schenn (yesyesyes!), or a Filatov or Brassard. Surely he's not worth a Turris? But what about a Boedker or a Hanzal or a Mueller? Our money would be on Filatov coming back. Maybe he and Kulemin and his wicked backhand are best friends and have chemistry.

So my faithful remnant, we here would put our money on the fact that another trade is coming. And, hey, if not, we got a second rounder that we can parlay into a surer thing than Stralman.

Keep the faith