TJ Brennan

Fantasy Impact:The Nashville Predators have acquired defenseman T.J. Brennan from the Florida Panthers in exchange for winger Bobby Butler.

The Panthers get: A complimentary scoring winger.

The Predators get: An offensive, but unproven defenseman who has been traded twice in the past five months. Why? Well, the Sabres traded Brennan because he had to clear waivers to be sent down and he wasn’t good enough for regular lineup duty. The Panthers traded Brennan because he is a restricted free agent. Obviously, Brennan is looking for a one-way deal and was perhaps giving Florida a headache over it (just a theory).

Fantasy Players Impacted: Brennan wasn’t good enough to warrant putting in Buffalo’s lineup. And now he’s not good enough to get signed to a contract? Something fishy about this. And now he goes to Nashville, a team already flush with puck-moving rearguards – and more on the way. He would have been better off taking a two-way deal with Florida, because you know that if he was sent to the minors on Monday he would be back up again on Tuesday when Dmitri Kulikov gets hurt (and you know it will happen). Instead, he’s buried on the Preds with almost no chance of succeeding there. He’ll be Gragnani’ed rigth out of this league.

And what if he does make it? It would be at the expense of Mattias Ekholm.

As for Butler, he is the latest in a short line of projects that the Panthers will try. I don’t put him in the Peter Mueller or Tomas Fleischmann category. Different pedigree. No, I would put him with the Alexei Kovalev, Wojtek Wolski, Casey Wellman group. A long shot likely to fail. But still, he was definitely not a Barry Trotz player so any team besides Nashville is an upgrade.

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Fantasy Players this helps, in order:

1. Butler

Fantasy Players this hurts, in order:

1. Brennan

huge chasm

large moat spanned by rickety bridge

2. Ekholm