Gagner Bolts to the Desert, Purcell Slides Into Edmonton, Tampa Dumps Hard

		2014 Season					2015
To Arizona	Age	Team	GP	G	P		Cap Hit
Sam Gagner	24	EDM	67	10	37		2 years/$4.8 million
B.J. Crombeen	28	TAM	55	3	10		1 year/$1.15 million
To Edmonton
Teddy Purcell	28	TAM	81	12	42		3 years/$4.5 million
To Tampa Bay
2015 6th Round Draft Pick

I always thought that the table to describe the trade was way more elegant than all that wordy typing, don't you think?  I'm so glad it's back.

How about a little complicated trade action to get this party started?  First, the Edmonton Oilers traded forward Sam Gagner to the Tampa Bay Lightning, which brought forward Teddy Purcell up to the Alberta capital.  After the deal was done, the Lightning then flipped Gagner with forward B.J. Crombeen to the Arizona Coyotes for a late round draft pick in 2015.  In the deal between the Lightning and Coyotes, Tampa does end up keeping 1/3 of Gagner's salary, making their cut about $1.6 million and then Coyotes will only have $3.2 million to their books.

First of all, let's look at the guy who was traded twice this evening.  As you can see in the table above, Gagner missed out on 15 games last season, which hurt his overall scoring totals.  He finished 216th overall in pool scoring, which is his lowest rank in the last six seasons, where his peak position is 55th overall.  With the Coyotes recently buying out centre Mike Ribeiro, there is a hole that needed to be filled and since it appears that Edmonton wouldn't deal with Arizona directly, the passing through Tampa Bay appeared to be necessary.  At $4.8 million for each of the next two seasons, Gagner does have the potential to be a real bargain, which is something the Coyotes are really known for finding.

Purcell didn't exactly come out of the gun like a shot, rather it was the move from Los Angeles to Tampa Bay, which ignited his career and made him into a reasonably consistent scorer in the NHL.  Purcell had posted some good numbers in Tampa Bay, including last season's 42 points and for the Oilers, who acquired him, they do get some winger help for their plethora of young centres and he comes in $300,000 lower than Gagner, who they shipped out on Sunday night.  Now it is matter of time to see who Purcell flanks in that young Oilers offense.

The third player in the deal, B.J. Crombeen, who is also heading to Arizona, but only out of Tampa's system, isn't necessarily considered to be a hockey pool-type player.  Bouncing up and down from the minors didn't help his cause much.

The Lightning, through this whole transaction, only end up with a 6th round draft pick in next year's draft, which indicates they were only looking to shift salary.  $5.65 million in cap dollars, to be precise, although, I wasn't necessarily convinced that Crombeen was going to make any difference to the cap any way.

First up, we'll look at the Coyotes and for what it's worth, I don't peg Crombeen in their projected line-up either, so the numbers won't reflect him until he makes the team.  I have Arizona coming in at $19.8 million left of cap space for eight more roster spots, leaving them in good shape for bargain hunting in the Summer, starting on Tuesday.

As for Edmonton, I have them with $24.9 million remaining for 11 spots on their projected roster, as they really didn't drop that much between Gagner and Purcell.  That doesn't leave the team with much breathing room for adding all those players, as they'll want to add another reasonably expensive ticket item to their roster, which leaves very little for their depth.

The Lightning were able to add over the NHL Entry Draft, so a little bit of subtraction was needed to balance the books, as it were.  The move of Purcell off their projected roster sees them need nine players for a 23-man roster and they have about $14.9 million to fill that out.  Also not much space, but the Bolts do have a lot of their key positions taken, so it may not be so bad.