This one is hard to peg on this market, but we wanted to add this to the ledger because of it’s impact. Marc-Andre Fleury was coming off the first Vezina Trophy of his career. He played very well, obviously. However, the Vegas Golden Knights felt like they had to go with the younger goalie in Robin Lehner. So, they gave Lehner a long-term deal, and they had to get Fleury’s $7 million cap hit off the books.
So, the Knights traded Fleury for a middling prospect in Mikael Hakkarainen. Hakkarainen was a 138th pick in the 2018 NHL Draft. He didn’t seem to have much of a shot to make the league, and that came to fruition. He’s now out of hockey entirely.
The reason this is up here is to show how much taking on an entire contract hurts the trade value. Fleury was, again, the Vezina Trophy winner. He went to Chicago to give them an outside shot of competing. In the middle of that season, he was traded to the Minnesota Wild. We didn’t add that trade since values are much different around the trade deadline.
Is there a player who equates this trade to the market right now? It’s a little different, but John Gibson might be looking at a return like this. Who’s trading for Gibson as if he’s a star player? A team will take him off the Ducks' hands, but the contract risk is too much to give even anything of a return.