Even after picking up Clay Stevenson off waivers before the season and with veteran Stuart Skinner on a two-year deal, the Jets will probably want a goalie in any trade involving Hellebuyck. <\/p>\n
Stevenson is an intriguing player, but he is largely unproven at age 27, and there is no way they are going to commit to him being any sort of a long-term answer at this point. <\/p>\n
Blues goalie Jordan Binnington has no-trade protections in his contract and could block a deal to Winnipeg, yet the Blues still seem to value him as their starter despite his inconsistent play. All of that would work out in the Jets’ favor because Hofer is probably the better goalie.<\/p>\n
The Blues would come away with a young defenseman in Nikishin who would upgrade their blue line and fit the core they are building around Robert Thomas, Dylan Holloway, Jimmy Snuggerud, Jake Neighbours and Philip Broberg. While those players are at different stages of their development, Nikishin would align with St. Louis’ effort to build a young, talented group capable of competing together over the long term. <\/p>\n
The price from St. Louis would be Hofer and a first-round pick, which is probably close to fair value. Simon Nemec\u2014a similarly skilled player at a comparable point in his career, with similar production\u2014was traded for two first-round picks earlier this summer. In this scenario, Hofer effectively replaces the second first-rounder. <\/p>\n
Carolina would part with Nikishin, Kochetkov, Unger Sorum, and one of its four first-round picks over the next three years, which is probably a similar type of value it would give up if it were just directly dealing with Winnipeg, and if Winnipeg wanted Nikishin. <\/p>\n
The question would be whether this is enough for Winnipeg. Hofer is a solid goalie, but he’s not Hellebuyck. He’s younger, but he’s also a restricted free agent after this season, and there’s always the question of whether he would sign there. <\/p>\n
Two first-round picks would represent meaningful value, though their ultimate worth would depend heavily on where they land. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even after picking up Clay Stevenson off waivers before the season and with veteran Stuart Skinner on a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":922083,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-922082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=922082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/922082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=922082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=922082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=922082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}