Bishop Dealt to Los Angeles

			2017 Season			2017	July 1st Status
To Los Angeles	Pos	Age	GP	Wins	Points	Cap	Years	Cap
Ben Bishop	G	30	32	16	34	$4.76m	0	UFA
2017 5th Round Draft Pick
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To Tampa Bay	Pos	Age	GP	G/W	Points	Cap	Years	Cap
Peter Budaj	G	34	53	27	69	$600k	0	UFA
Erik Cernak	D	19	0	0	0	$702k	2	$702k
Retained Cap Hit					20%	$1.19m
2017 7th Round Draft Pick
Conditional Draft Pick

The Los Angeles Kings have made the splash into the trade deadline pool, acquiring Ben Bishop from the Tampa Bay Lightning, making one of the deadlier goalie combos in the NHL today.

In total, the Kings give up one of the better pool goalies this season in Peter Budaj and a 2015 2nd round pick in defenseman Erik Cernak to get the superstar goaltender, with late round picks getting swapped either way.

Bishop is on the final year of his current deal and with Andrei Vasilevskiy coming into his own this season, there was belief that he was going to be let go for nothing through free agency, if nothing was to happen, like this trade.  Bishop did miss some time to a lower-body injury this season, hence his numbers are not all that great, but I think if you were to ask anyone, you would happily take Bishop over Budaj on the long haul, regardless.

The book on Budaj, however, is that he has had an excellent season, at the time of the deal going down, amidst play already underway on Sunday, he was ranked 6th overall in pool points with 69.  It should be noted that this was behind one of the league's best defenses, which has shown its weaknesses this year as well, given that they are still out of the playoff picture at the start of play today.

The Kings have a pretty intense schedule moving ahead and a number one goalie in Jonathan Quick that is just coming off a major groin injury, so some support for the condensed schedule and some insurance behind the healed groin, Bishop's acquisition looks like a solid move for the Kings today.  Win now, worry about the rest later.

Both Bishop and Budaj are goalies that belong to pool teams that are below the equator in the standings in Dale C. and Wes, respectively.  Okay, to be fair, Wes is on the equator, 13th place, at the time of the deal going in, but neither team are really in the running for the money today.

If there was a winner between the two, I would say Dale's goalie, Bishop, got the better of the deal, getting the better team to play for, but that won't necessarily translate into playing time either, whereas Budaj will go to a lesser team, but might find a way into more games down the stretch... even that isn't a guarantee either, with Vasilevskiy now the number one guy.