I generally don’t trust summertime rumors unless the trial balloons being floated as to whether a player might be on the market come from reputable sources.
It’s one thing if somebody proposes a trade on CapFriendly or PuckPedia and some outlet picks it up and treats it like Gospel truth (there are several websites that are milking clicks by doing this); it’s another if an actual NHL media person suggests that a player might be on the trade market.
In the case of 32-year-old defenseman Dougie Hamilton, the trade rumors regarding the big man (6’6,” 229 pounds) with the equally gigantic salary cap hit of $9 million for the next three years, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Several plain old fans have wondered aloud whether the Devils, who have a PuckPedia-estimated $6.9 million in cap space, will clear cap room to re-sign restricted free agent Luke Hughes via trading Hamilton, but several well-qualified media representatives from the New York and New Jersey areas think that the team might move Hamilton to re-sign Hughes, too.
The Devils had to pay a massive $10,550,000 bonus to Hamilton on July 1st, so he’s only going to make $1,000,000 in actual money this upcoming season, and that makes him that much more of an appealing trade candidate.
As such, Bleacher Report’s Adam Gretz suggests that 5 teams represent good “fits” for Hamilton, including the Detroit Red Wings:
Detroit Red Wings
The Detroit Red Wings playoff drought is approaching a full decade, and they are now six years into it under general manager Steve Yzerman. Pressure should be building. The incentive to win now should be there. If it is, they have a strange way of going about dealing with it because they have done very little this offseason outside of bringing in James van Riemsdyk and trading for John Gibson.
As good as some of their younger core players are, that’s not going to be enough to make up the difference in the Eastern Conference playoff race.
They need more help offensively and defensively, and Hamilton could help satisfy both needs. They also have more than $12 million in salary cap space remaining and could fit in Hamilton’s remaining contract without having to do much else or get too creative.
Yzerman talked about now getting a chance to sign any of the top free agents because a lot of them re-signed in their current spots, or went elsewhere before they could talk to any of them. He can’t give up on improving the team after that and needs to get aggressive in the trade market.
Hamilton would be a perfect player to go after if the Devils are seriously willing to listen or shop him.
Continued; according to PuckPedia, Hamilton has both a no-movement clause and a no-trade clause with a 10-team no-trade list this summer, so he’d have to sign off on any trade personally to waive his NMC, and Detroit might be on his no-trade list, so he might have to waive that as well…
But there’s a real fit here in terms of the Wings’ need for a big defenseman to take pressure off Moritz Seider and the Devils’ need to clear cap space for Luke Hughes, so this is a trade rumor that “has legs.”
Yes.