Dallas - Pittsburg trade

[OnAFly]

Dallas traded James Neal, a young wing who scored 27 and 21 goals in the past two years, and Matt Niskanen a young defenseman for Goligoski another young defenseman.

Are you kidding me? Who is running the Dallas ship into the ground?

Can we trade Barker for Loui Eriksson? We'll even throw in a Kobasew to sweeten the pot...maybe the rights to Sheppard if they drive a hard bargain.

[scsavre]

Goligoski is an awesome offensive dman. They need him. Niskanen is a waste of money at $1.5mm and they pretty much added him to the trade to get him off the cap. Neal was pretty darn good though.

Keep watching looks like a positioning play to me. Maybe Hemsky.....

[Bear55]

I think Dallas needs to clear some cap space if they want to keep Richards around, from what I understand Niskanen hasn't been playing all that great and might be a salary dump. So you are left with a young talented forward traded for a young talented D-man, which just happens to fit a big need for each team.

[OnAFly]

As far as a cap dump, Dallas is 8mil under this year. They don't need the space. Was Niskanen really playing that badly?

[Bear55]

It does appear they have a little cap room (I currently see 7) but that was after they unloaded an extra 2.5 on the Penguins.

From what I have heard Niskanen wasn't playing all that great last year and has even regressed a little this year, he is still young so hopefully he can turn things around but I am guessing Dallas decided to give up on him.