Pierre LeBrun

If you wait until July 1st and only then realize he's not signing, if that's what ends up happening, now you're into a process where maybe the best trade you get is with the team that he'll sign with, and that gets CAA, his representation, involved.

Whereas if you trade him before March 6th, you have none of that part involved.

You're literally just saying to the rest of the league, you get at least two playoff cracks with a top three defenseman in the world, come and get him.

Again, they'd rather sign him.

They'd rather sign Quinn Hughes.

That's priority number one.

But it's really interesting to me the timing of all this because you can't sign him until the summer, but you may get your best trade possible before March 6th.

How do you figure that out?

all right go ahead pierre yeah and i know that when the the oilers yeah when the oilers talked about whether there was a goalie upgrade out there before last year's trade deadline yeah they just came to the conclusion that that they couldn't see something that was tangibly 100 better than what they had in terms of what was available you know john gibson was basically the only name available and there's no guarantee there and so they didn't pull the trigger on that so that that's the hard part

I love the point you brought up about Colorado, Brian, because not only did they remake their goaltending in season, in fact, their Wedgwood trade was on November 30th last year.

I interviewed Chris McFarlane just a couple of days ago and, you know, the Avalanche actually retooled a third of their roster in season a year ago.

They kept making trade after trade and they were a contender and they got it done and it didn't help them.

They lost in the first round again to Dallas, but they look pretty darn good right now, one year later.

16-1-5.

That's why they traded him.

That's why they traded him.

Yeah, exactly.