Vegas trades Gusev to Devils

[folatre]

The Russian signs 2 years/$9 million deal with New Jersey. The Devils gave up a 2020 3rd and 2021 2nd.

I think that Vegas did okay given the cap constraints. Maybe they did not want to trade him to a division rival like Edmonton who was definitely interested, but basically I think they took the best deal out there.

New Jersey only controls the player for two seasons and considering they are not a contender to win anything right now I am not sure I would make the same move as Shero. And it is not like committing $9 million dollars, a 2nd, and a 3rd to a 27 year old with zero games played in the NHL is a low risk proposition. Of course, the optimist would say looking at Gusev's skill level that the Devils are making a high reward bet.

[seventeen]

If he turns out like Dadanov, that's 65-70 points year. Well worth $4.5MM. Or he could be Shipachyov who was 30 when he tried.

[BadCompany]

This should be an interesting test. Some of the advanced stats guys are saying that he's as good as Panarin or Kucherov.

And yet only two teams appear to have made serious offers, and those offers fell into the Andrew Shaw category in terms of quality.

So it will be interesting to see what happens. Every NHL team has an analytics department (honest, they do) so you would think that teams would be lining up to sign the next Kucherov for $4.5 million a season. And yet, they didn't. So what's really going on?

Gusev will be playing with either Hall, Hughes, or Hischier. So he's going to have a good offensive center with him. Nobody can say he won't be in a position to succeed.

[blny]

My concern with Gusev is his commitment to the NHL. He'd been reluctant all this time, and VGK would have been a good landing spot.

[Skilly]

Oh boy … I don't put any faith into NHL Equivalent Scoring models. There is way to many variables that these models have no way of taking into account