Foolish gamble or savvy move?

[MikeyDangles]

The trade deadline in my league was today and I just pulled off a somewhat risky move to land a bit of an enigmatic player with fantastic upside. How do you rate this move on my part?:

League settings: CBS, Roto, G,A,PIM,PPP,W,GAA 16 team, start 3C,2LW,2RW,2F,4D,2-3G ... Keep 15 players for next year

I give:

Andrei Kostitsyn, RW
Braydon Coburn, D

I receive:

Alexander Semin, LW

Basically I was quite sure that I wasn\'t going to keep Coburn and I wanted to use him as a trade chip at the deadline to improve my team for the long run as I am out of the running this year.

My Keepers as of right now:

C- Kopitar, Bergeron, Carter, Kessel
LW- Vanek, Semin, Wolski
RW- Hemsky
D- Visnovsky, E. Johnson, Pitkanen
G- Lundqvist, Rask, Howard,

+ 1 of Garon, Hensick, Giroux (Others not worth keeping are not included)

So, what do you think?

[dbellan]

looks like a good move to me... concentrating talent in a limited keeper is always the best way to go, and i think semin is clearly the best player in the trade

[kytmagic]

Ummm, I don\'t know. I am really high on Kostitsyn. He\'s been point per game since Christmas (this is just a guess), so I\'m not sold on the fact that his upside is that much lower than Semin. Maybe others think Semin is way better...

Appreciate it if you could look at my Streit thread, .

[MikeyDangles]

kytmagic wrote:

Ummm, I don\'t know. I am really high on Kostitsyn. He\'s been point per game since Christmas (this is just a guess), so I\'m not sold on the fact that his upside is that much lower than Semin. Maybe others think Semin is way better...

Appreciate it if you could look at my Streit thread, .

Don\'t get me wrong, Kostitsyn is a great player and I was hesitant to move him. However, I think he will rely more on his linemates to be an elite player throughout his career. Semin just has sick natural talent and can do basically whatever he wants when he is motivated. LW\'s seem to be a little more scarce in CBS as well which is why i was more willing to pull the trigger.

I\'ll take a look at your thread right now.

[kytmagic]

Mikey,

I agree with you that Semin is probably more talented from all that I have read. I think that\'s the general opinion. It\'s just that with the way Kosty has been playing, I was hoping you could milk the guy more, haha, but it can be hard in some leagues.

[rumrunner]

I like this deal, given that you were dropping Coburn.
Although as a Coburn and Pitkanen owner, I think I would
have packaged Pitkanen up instead. Coburn is really coming into his own in Philly and that team is looking better than EDM.

I like Semin over AK, so I\'d give you the thumbs up.

[Dobber]

I like AK over Semin for the following reasons:
-Semin had a rough year injury-wise. Is that a trend? Future Band-aid boy? It\'s a little scary.

-I disagree that AK relies on linemates. I think he\'ll make linemates. He has more upside than Plekanec and I think he and Plekanec have turned Kovalev\'s career around.

You took a risk - Semin has maybe five points more upside than AK, who is the safer bet I feel. It may pay off, but I wouldn\'t have done it.
I\'d keep Coburn over bandaid boy Pitkanen any day of the week, as well.
B)

[MikeyDangles]

Dobber wrote:

I like AK over Semin for the following reasons:
-Semin had a rough year injury-wise. Is that a trend? Future Band-aid boy? It\'s a little scary.

-I disagree that AK relies on linemates. I think he\'ll make linemates. He has more upside than Plekanec and I think he and Plekanec have turned Kovalev\'s career around.

You took a risk - Semin has maybe five points more upside than AK, who is the safer bet I feel. It may pay off, but I wouldn\'t have done it.
I\'d keep Coburn over bandaid boy Pitkanen any day of the week, as well.
B)

Well your post is certainly less than re-assuring Dobber but I will give a little more insight to my decision.

Semin being injury prone:
- Personally I don\'t think he is going to be the type to have repeating nagging injuries. This year has been rough for him but Semin is a fairly big guy and he doesn\'t play a very rambunctous(sp) style. He can be as effective as he wants to be shooting from the perimeter and on the PP.

I certainly agree that AK is the safer pick. He plays with more heart and doesn\'t have an injury history. However I don\'t think he is as close to Semin in terms of long term upside as you do. I agree that AK can make other players more effective but I don\'t think he can do it all on his own like Semin can. At their peak points production I see Semin being 15 points better. I also like that he is a LW.

The Pitkanen/Coburn part may definitely be a mistake. However, I have always liked Pitkanen and feel that if he stays in Edmonton while these younger players grow that he will get back to the value he had in Philly the past 2 seasons (despite how bad Philly was last year he was still a very valuable D in my league format). I made the decision that I wasn\'t going to keep Coburn so I felt I had to trade him while he still had value to those in my league who were in the running and before the deadline came.