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Why Waiving Calvin Pickard Makes Sense

October 5, 2017, 2:58 PM ET [62 Comments]
Sheng Peng
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This morning, Calvin Pickard was waived, and just-claimed Malcolm Subban was installed as the Golden Knights' back-up goalie.

Subban, who has just played two NHL games.

Subban, who George McPhee referred to yesterday as "not...ready for this level."

Now, the inexperienced Subban has supplanted Pickard, who most recently was both an NHL and World Championships starter.

And it all makes complete sense.

Well, if you trying to lose more than you win right now, that is.

One of the beauties of "Pickard for Subban" is that on pure trade value, it's okay. Pickard is obviously the better goalie right now, but Subban is younger and owns more upside. Nobody denies that the 2012 first-round pick is an intriguing talent.

McPhee, who refused comment today, might have echoed what he said yesterday about Subban, "We see something in the player." Basically, he liked this player so much, he had to get him, damn the consequences.

And for a team which is not projected to win a lot of games anyway, why not gamble on Subban's upside at the cost of a couple victories? The optics might be bad right now, but they get a lot better when Rasmus Dahlin is slipping on his Golden Knights jersey next June.

And you never know -- if Goaltending Coach Dave Prior can unlock Subban's talent -- you might also have Marc-Andre Fleury's heir apparent.

So a better shot at Dahlin and your potential future #1 at the cost of a couple wins this year?

I'd buy that for a dollar, which is more than what McPhee paid.

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It's worth noting that Fleury has not played over 60 regular season games since 2014-15. He's also never played over 70.

So Subban looks like he'll be thrown into the fire a fair amount.

And if Fleury gets hurt?

Anyway, McPhee said of Subban yesterday, "If we can get him to adjust to the way we think he should play and if he's coachable, we think we could have a good one."

Can Subban make these adjustments quickly enough?

While Vegas doesn't appear to be as interested in winning games right now, hence cutting the more established NHL goalie, they won't want to be embarrassed out there.

Subban does have a good sense of what he needs to work on, "Calming down my game, for sure, that's always been a thing I’ve been trying to work on."

Besides the Bruins and his many critics, most importantly, Subban will have to prove himself to his teammates. These guys want to win right now -- and they were expecting a couple rocks behind them in Fleury and Pickard. They don't care about Subban's upside or diving for Dahlin.

With a couple back-to-backs in October, we should see how swiftly Subban has acclimated.

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