To trade or to let go...

[hoopej2]

Every summer we poolies are faced with a decision. Do we trade or let our players go?

One option is to trade away the players you can\'t keep but that another team would want to keep. The benefit to you is obviously better draft picks in the upcoming draft. The downside is that you are guaranteeing that you will not be able to get these players back.

The other option is to let them go into the draft and making the player you get when it\'s your turn to draft a little better. For example, purely based on points the top three guys that will be available in my league\'s draft next year will be: Brunette 67, Straka 65 and Drury 60. If I have Brind\'Amour who has 73 points but don\'t want to keep him over guys like Langkow, Stastny or Sedins and if I am drafting 3rd and I trade away Brind, I\'ll be able to at least get Drury. But if I let Brind go into the draft, I now have a chance to get Straka because presumably Brind would be taken by one of the top two guys.

This is the decision each GM is faced with and some years I think I\'m better off just letting the players go into the draft, and others I feel better getting something for what otherwise will be useless to me after I submit my keeper list.

Thoughts?

[mamon]

I\'d suggest trading Brindy for Drury based solely on the fact that while they\'re fairly equal in points, Brind\'amour will probably retire within 3-4 years (Drury won\'t).

[Dobber]

I prefer to always trade and get value for him. There are tons of options out there to draft, and if you do enough homework you don\'t need to worry about drafting a guy that you just traded.

[Loki]

I always go with trading.

I traded Kariya to move \"only\" 2 slots a couple of years back which appeared to be very costly but what the team with the 2nd overall pick did not know was that the team with the 1st overall pick already hit the max in our league for center keepers. Guess which center was in that draft...Crosby.

Last year I traded Bertuzzi to move down a couple of slots and wrapped up Kopitar.