Ottawa Senators: Making Sense of Awful Trade Proposals

Trades generated by opposing teams fans have some interesting outcomes

While most of the NHL is preparing for the playoffs, most of the hockey world is justifiably captivated by the possibility of an incredible 24-team tournament, if they can pull it off. For fans of the other seven teams though, this current stretch marks the league’s longest ever off-season, and the fact that rosters have been largely frozen means there’s very little intrigued in terms of the on-ice product.

One way to pass the time for hockey-craved fans is to generate trade proposals, and while many are logical and grounded in reality, some are, shall we say, less so. An age-old tradition among sports fans is fantasizing about some team giving up a high-end player in exchange for your team’s least favourite player or prospect, fortunately, CapFriendly’s Trade Machine gives us the chance to see some of those proposals from fans.

I’ve found some trades generated by fans involving Ottawa that are less than reasonable, and they’ve given me a much needed laugh during these trying times. But maybe before I mock them, I should prove that I can do better. After all, I’m surely not immune from overvaluing Sens in trades, so perhaps I should cut them some slack.

I believe in the value of teamwork, so I’ll use the trades I’ve been ridiculing as starting points and hopefully our biases can cancel each other out and we wind up with a trade that may work out for both sides. While I’ll be making big changes to the trades, I will try to understand what the architect of the trade was thinking and keep the spirit of the trade intact.