(players in bold involved in trades)

There are a number of factors that go into these trades. The first is that with the leading scorers in the NHL only putting up totals in the 80's it is necessary to be very careful about the contracts taken on. The narrower the separation between the elite scorers and the rest of the league the more perilous it is to pay more for elite production. This makes it much easier to trade an elite talent for Connor McDavid when the separation between McDavid and the top scorers will not be as significant as it could be in other years. The low ceiling of the scoring race in the NHL significantly mitigates the risk in this case. The scarcity of players scoring at high levels, 1.2 points per game, means that there is reason to take risks as to how you get those points.

This was not just about the shallower ceiling amongst the league's top scorers. With Malkin approaching 30 and having traded Okposo and Byfuglien already this year I thought that I needed to make a move to acquire elite talent now. If McDavid meets the hype the price I paid now will likely be half as much as I would have to pay three years from now. In this case it is a bet that the present cost will be more than made up for by his future production. If McDavid is amongst the top 10 in league scoring by the end of his entry level contract the deal will immediately pay off. 

The lessened risk in swapping out Malkin for McDavid made it possible to essentialy trade Hedman and Shattenkirk for Letang and OEL. Hedman and Shattenkirk present less risk this coming year than OEL and Letang as they are in stable situations and neither is especially injury prone. Conversely OEL and Letang each provide varying degrees of risk. OEL is on a team that is rebuilding and just traded away his partner in crime, thus it is likely that he will suffer a drop in production. Letang on the other is very injury prone and is a high risk to miss significant amounts of time. That risk is balanced to a degree by their contracts in comparison to Hedman and Shattenkirk. Both OEL and Letang have long-term contract that should be lower than the contract that Hedman and Shattenkirk get in two years. The money saved in the Malkin-McDavid swap allowed me to take on salary in near future in order to gain stability in the future. Thus the Malkin-McDavid swap created cap space that allowed for a more conservative approach to salary if not the actual players.

This relates back to risk averse behavior because my first instinct to the second half of this trade, the trade for McDavid, was to balk at it. It was only after I ran some numbers that I realized it would not be as damaging to my team as I had first assumed. At first I could see the risk, the trading of two elite defensemen, two good young players and some good future assets for McDavid and Letang, Letang being injury prone and overpaid. Running the numbers was integral to proving that the deal made sense both now and in the future. As I always considered myself to be open to taking risks in fantasy hockey I did not realize how risk averse I really am. This is not a call to take unwarranted risks, rather to recognize that everyone is prone to looking more at the credit side of the ledger than the debit side. Given that the negatives are already stacked against any proposed deal try taking a second look at all the positives if the deal is even close.