Detroit Red Wings LW Tomas Tatar looks to be having a breakout season. After scoring 19 goals and 39 points in 72 games last season, Tatar is on a pace to easily eclipse those marks as he already has 16 goals and 26 points in 39 games this season.
Fair enough. Good for him and good for the Red Wings.
But, does that mean Tatar should be a principle in a potential trade for Buffalo Sabres d-man Tyler Myers?
Helene St. James of the Detroit Free Press seems to think so. "Tatar [is] intriguing as a trade asset," wrote St. James, yesterday. "The Wings are eager to add a top-four defenseman who shoots right, and to get someone of quality - like Buffalo's Tyler Myers - it would take a young hotshot. Maybe the Wings can sway the Sabres with Tatar and defenseman Jakub Kindl (who doesn't seem to have a future in Detroit), along with a second-round draft pick."
Somehow, Ms. St. James, methinks that an offer like that just isn't quite good enough to get the job done. Especially for a defenseman like Myers who, like you once wrote, "stands a towering 6-feet-8, the only D-man who can look Boston’s Zdeno Chara in the eye without craning his neck. He is good offensively (he has hit or come close to 10 goals four out of five seasons) and valuable on the power play, where he has 13 of his 41 career goals. He is a very good skater, plays in all situations and can serve as a shut-down guy. Myers makes mistakes (like everyone else), but he has franchise defenseman written all over him, and he is still two or three years removed from even entering his prime."
St. James wrote that in July then speculated on radio that the Wings would be willing to move names like Gustav Nyquist, Tartar or Tomas Jurco along with "a defenseman, and a first-round pick" to land Myers.
In essence, she reiterated a previous package, defined the defenseman (Kindl) and lowered the draft pick from a 1st-rounder to a 2nd.
Myers is still two or three years removed from his prime. He's still a 6'8," right-handed, shutdown defenseman who is a very good skater. And although his offensive numbers project out to be a career low two goals and 18 points, he's logging an average of over 25 minutes/game and has a plus-minus of minus-4, tops for defensemen on Buffalo.
Right now, with Myers in the lineup, the defense-corps falls into place. As written in my last piece, Buffalo without Myers is a team in disarray. This season the Sabres have a 13-17-2 record with him in the lineup and are 1-6-1 when he's not in the lineup.
With all due respect to those who come up with trades like these, save your bytes. To use St. James' own words, in the very least, Myers can "serve as a shutdown guy." At best "he has franchise defenseman written all over him." He's also has a very manageable $5.5m cap-hit, with $23m of his $38.5m salary already paid out with four more years remaining on his contract (less than a $4m/yr. payroll figure.)
And, although he does have a no-trade clause, it doesn't kick in until after the 2016-17 season.
Tatar, Nyquist, Jurco and Kindl are not the names to get the job done, no matter how many are thrown in. And a second round pick associated with those names should only receive a *click* as an answer.
If Detroit is serious, and they should be considering they're still trying to recover from the loss of Niklas Lidstrom, they might want to start with names like Anthony Mantha and Dylan Larkin. They should also remember that the Sabres really don't need more draft picks. As it stands, they have three 1st-rounders and two 2nd-rounders in the 2015 draft. In a strong draft like the one forthcoming, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think GM Tim Murray and his scouts can find a player on the level of Tatar and Nyquist.
And they wouldn't be giving up a defenseman "who has franchise written all over him" in the process.
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