Rather than a bunch of individual posts, I figured putting everything in one post would be better. Here we go!

Laine Acquired!

Our first big acquisition is former 40-goal scorer Patrik Laine. Full trade is:

• To SEA: Patrik Laine
• To CBJ: Eeli Tolvanen, 2024 NYR 2nd (#63 overall), 2025 SEA 6th

This trade is a gamble due to Laine's injury issues. However, if he's healthy and motivated, he's got special scoring talent as a former 40 goal scorer. More likely he can be a 30+ goal scorer for us. Giving up Tolvanen is tough since he was a great middle 6 winger for us, but ultimately we needed to add high-end skill to our forward roster. Laine's $8.7M cap hit is also a lot to take on, but it is only for 2 years.

All told we felt that this move offered the best balance between cost in player + draft assets and potential upside. In the worst case Laine won't be a drag on our books when we're ready to seriously compete and in the best case we got a high-end scorer for a waiver claim, a late 2nd, and a nearly worthless 6th round pick.

Beniers Signs Extension!

It's not official yet in the sim, but we've agreed to a 6 year, $6.4M AAV contract with Matty Beniers. He has an NMC and 16-team NTC in the final year of the contract.

We wanted to do a 7-year deal at around $7M AAV, but Beniers' camp wanted a higher AAV than we were willing to do. We also considered a 2-year bridge deal before settling on a 6 year contract that buys 1 UFA year but keeps the AAV low.

Buium Drafted at 8th

LD Zeev Buium was high on our list and landed in our laps at 8th, where we happy picked him. Buium is a 6'0" high-end offensive play driver who is already an NCAA Champion with the University of Denver and projects as a #1 or #2 blueliner. We see him as our future star defenseman and gives us an eventual replacement for Dunn as our PP quarterback. We think there's a very good chance Buium ends up as the best defenseman in the draft.

https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/603229/zeev-buium

Highlights – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkXa55ACF7c, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bajZwRfKRqY

In real life, several projections have the Kraken taking 6'3" LD Sam Dickinson who was available for us to take, but we like Buium's higher offensive upside.

Boisvert Drafted at 29th

Dallas shockingly offered to trade us their 29th overall pick for our 40th overall plus our 2025 4th. We immediately accepted the deal and drafted 6'2" center Sacha Boisvert, who is headed to the University of North Dakota next season. Boisvert is ranked in the early 20s by many scouting firms so this is a huge win for us adding a highly skilled forward.

https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/597530/sacha-boisvert

This is definitely something unlikely to happen in real life!

Other Draft Picks

We have 1 more pick in the early 4th round tomorrow to wrap up our draft, but we got 2 more players in the 3rd:

• D Jakub Fibigr https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/619063/jakub-fibigr
• D Gabriel Eliasson https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/618997/gabriel-eliasson

Fibigr is only 17 and has lots of room to grow, while Eliasson is a 6'7" monster who could be a perfect Oleksiak replacement in a few years.

Cap Situation and Next Moves

We still have just over $10M in cap space left after signing Beniers and getting Laine. We anticipate spending about $1.8M to sign our recently acquired young 4C, Lundestrom, and will have a few roster spots for young guys on ELCs to take hold of in camp like Winterton, Melanson, and Morrison.

This will leave us somewhere around $6M to acquire another player, either through trade or free agency. We're continuing to look for opportunities to improve our roster to push for the playoffs next season.