Eastside's Hockey Elite Collide

To Phoenix:
D Tomas Kaberle [74]
Washington's fifth round pick in 2011

To Washington:
C Jarret Stoll [77]
C Pavel Kulikov [52]

Stoll is a solid two-way center that can win draws - a dominant faceoff guy is something my team has always lacked. He's put up excellent numbers for the last ~1.25 seasons with Phoenix so I have no problems with putting him in my top six, even if his offensive abilities aren't totally suitable. This lets Mr. Nicklas "35 faceoff win %" Backstrom avoid faceoffs, and I think the second line will be more effective with him playing wing. And of course, Kulikov is a nice project Russian.

Kaberle just doesn't seem to like playing hockey. He's being outscored by Mike Komisarek who doesn't even play on the powerplay. I'm all for giving Godfrey/Plekhanov/Schultz a chance for a quarter of the cap space, as they probably can't do much worse. Kaberle's definitely got some curse to him and I now understand why Adam hates him. It seems like he's one of those guys who needs a lot of ES/PP time to be effective. Hopefully he can get that in Phoenix.

Stoll was a fantastic waiver pickup for us and we couldn't have asked him to do more in his time here, but with guys like Connolly, Kartayev, and Basaraba on their way up through the system, one or two of my top six forwards was going to become expendable by next season anyway. With Jovanovski leaving as a free agent, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to upgrade the blueline. Kulikov has upside but wasn't ever going to become a game-breaker for us, so the inclusion of him to get the deal done is palatable. The 5th rounder just sweetens the deal a little on our end.

Phoenix approves of this deal. Thank you Washington; great doing business with you.

This trade is Approved and inputted.