Don Waddell Gave The Dumbest Reason Ever As To Why He Made The Patrik Laine Trade

Don Waddell Gave The Dumbest Reason Ever As To Why He Made The Patrik Laine Trade

Don Waddell is the new man in charge in Columbus and if the Patrik Laine trade is any indication on how he will perform at his new gig… fans should be rather concerned. I gave the Blue Jackets an F in my trade grades post on the Laine deal because the deal they executed truly makes zero sense.

Waddell tried his best to defend the Laine deal. His reasoning as to why the deal was made is so dumb you can’t make it up.

VIA Brian Hedger of the Columbus Dispatch:

“Any other deals we’d talked about were all about retaining half, and our goal was to get out of the whole contract. So, we’re happy it worked out. I called him and wished him the best of luck. Sometimes, you’ve got to make decisions that are better for your hockey club, and gaining cap (space) and cash means a lot for two years.“

There are a lot of teams that are either over the cap or right up against it, and if nothing happens right now, we’ll just go into training camp.  We just gave ourselves so much more flexibility. Even if it doesn’t work out this year, going into next summer knowing that you don’t have that on your books is a relief.

Trade Grades: Patrik Laine To Montreal

So let me get this straight. You made the Laine trade to clear cap space so that you could eat dead cap space during the deadline as a third party broker? Which on the surface would make sense except for the part where the Blue Jackets gave up a second round pick just to get rid of Laine. What’s the goal here? To eat dead cap space at the deadline so that you can maybe get the value of the second round pick back?

Sooooooo they traded a second round pick just to get rid of Laine with the hopes of getting it back with the new cap space. That means they gave up Laine for literally nothing other than a third pair defenseman who the Canadiens needed to get rid of anyway. We do get how insane this is, right?

The Blue Jackets now have approximately $18.2 million in cap space. Why wouldn’t Columbus just retain on Laine to actually get some value back? What’s the difference in having $4 million less in cap space and who’s to say you still couldn’t have been a third party broker at the deadline?

Also… who the hell is coming to Columbus next offseason that you needed that money for? This team is not a contender. Even Blue Jackets’ fans are willing to acknowledge that.

That trade is impossible to defense. What’s crazier is that I’m not sure it’s possible to look worse than the last idiot GM but Waddell has done just that.

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