“This doesn’t move the needle for CBJ one bit even though Saad is a heck of a player. Hockeyfreeforall.com rates this an even swap motivated by future salary and other considerations. Marco Dano is a young buck and should fit well in CHI at a much lower price tag. CBJ needs to address its back line which was among the worst in the NHL according to our work. Until that happens, trading good players for other good players isn’t really a step forward. Contracts and cap ruling the day here.’  Additionally,

Hockeyfreeforall dot com would rate this trade an even swap with possibly the edge going to CBJ. Marco Dano is an excellent player with huge upside and Anisimov is filler that should be OK in Chicago. Brandon Saad can only get better at his age as he was among the leaders on CHI in our advanced metric. The CBJ have much bigger problems that the Saad signing by itself will not address, especially because they could not move their laggards (yet). Namely, their bottom 10 players are guys that are marginal NHL players at best. CHI wasn’t stupid, they wanted in return for Saad guys that would not cost the team goals at the margin while ridding themselves of a future big contract. CBJ has a lot more work to do and this doesn’t really move the needle.

We will write a full analysis of the Blue jackets soon.  They are the posyer children for teams that need to pay attention to the AB score.  This trade would have been great had they moved some of their problem players in return for Saad.