With the Entry Draft and the trades taking up most of the headlines for the last few days, the Anaheim Ducks re-signing Patrick Eaves went by without much fanfare. He was re-upped by the team that traded for him for three more years with an average annual value of $3.15 million per season.

Eaves turned 33 years old in May.

By now, teams should probably be smarter than this. How many more times can a career role player have an out-of-nowhere monster season that he is then overpaid for? The only thing that kept this from being four years at four million a season was the Clutch Playoff Performance Contract Multiplier, which adds at least 25 percent in total value to any new contract for a player with at least two game-winning goals in the preceding playoffs.

David Clarkson, Dave Bolland, Justin Abdelkader and Matt Beleskey, to name a few, fit this ideal. Add Eaves to the list.

This isn’t to say that Eaves is a bad player. Just like the others listed in the paragraph above aren’t bad players. But cap space is an asset (just ask Chicago or Los Angeles), and overpaying guys that should be playing in your bottom-six restricts a team’s flexibility. Overpaying and giving them term, even more so.

This also isn’t to say that he can’t be a worthwhile fantasy asset on this team, either. After the trade away from Dallas, he spent most of his time playing with Ryan Getzlaf, one of the premier pivots in the NHL. If Eaves keeps up his shot rate from last year – which was way out of line from recent years, but more in line with what he did earlier in his career in a smaller role – then there is no reason he can’t be a 20-goal player next year.

My biggest concern is his ADP. A player coming off a 32-goal season and expected to skate with an elite centre likely isn’t going to be cheap at the draft table. Even in an absurd career year, he was outside the top-100 fantasy players in standard roto leagues (results will vary by league, I’m going by standard ESPN). In those types of leagues, then, I wouldn’t take him anywhere inside the top-150. At that point, you’re drafting him at his upside, and that kind of strategy is the quickest way to finish in eighth place. If his ADP gets outside the first 12 rounds of a 12-team league, then it’s more of a discussion.

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NHL Free Agent Frenzy is this coming Saturday. For all your fantasy analysis, be sure to be around Dobber when the bell tolls on July 1^st. The team here will have articles up all day long, covering the fantasy impacts of the signings.

With how much things can change over the course of a few days, I’m wary of deciding winners and losers from this past weekend. But these are my Ramblings, so here are some winners and losers from a fantasy perspective over the last week. 

Winners

Oliver Ekman-Larsson

Since the trade of Keith Yandle, it’s been the OEL show in the desert. Normally, that’d be a good thing for fantasy purposes, but he was asked to do everything, all the time, on a team that has been among the worst in the NHL.

Niklas Hjalmarsson coming in means one of two things: he gets a partner he can rely on defensively, or he gets a guy playing on another pair that can take away some of the tougher minutes. Not all of the tough minutes; I imagine Arizona still wants OEL up against some of the top competition. At least, now, they have someone else who is actually capable of doing it.

There were some personal issues likely playing into his lackluster fantasy performance last year, along with a broken hand. With reinforcements in town, and last year behind him, this should be a rebound season for Ekman-Larsson in fantasy leagues.

Henrik Lundqvist

Now that Antti Raanta is making his winter home in Arizona, the home cage at Madison Square Garden belongs firmly to Lundqvist. The team will bring in a backup to spell him off as every team does, but the spectre of a starter-in-waiting is gone.

The 2016-17 campaign was probably Lundqvist’s worst of his career, all told. He will also be going into his Age 35 season, which is far past the point when most goaltenders decline. It is very possible his decline will continue.

On the flipside, after his decade of dominance, the King should have earned some leeway with fantasy owners. New York’s defence should be improved with Dan Girardi gone, Marc Staal’s role minimized (if he’s even on the roster), the introduction of Anthony DeAngelo, and perhaps an addition through free agency. I doubt he will be a top-12 goalie by ADP in September, so if I can grab him as my second goaltender for the next fantasy season, I will be more than happy.

Mike Smith

It has been years – several of them – since Smith had any real fantasy relevance. Sure, he’s been used as a spot starter or used in deeper formats. For five straight years, however, he never had a save percentage above .916, a goals against average under 2.50, or cracked the 30-win mark. Playing on a perennial non-playoff team will do that to a goalie.

I am no fan of Smith and his talent, but his individual situation has improved drastically. Arizona has improved in the offseason so far, but Calgary was one of the top defensive teams in the NHL at five-on-five last year, and the addition of Travis Hamonic should only help them even more in this regard.

Again, asking Smith to be even league average may be asking too much. This will be all on him, however; the team in front of him is very good, and considerably better than the team he came from.

Losers

Florida Panthers

Losing Jonathan Marchessault and Reilly Smith is a huge problem. This began with protecting four defencemen – Mark Pysyk and Alex Petrovic included – instead of keeping together their forward crop. Yes, they were going to lose someone in the expansion draft, but it didn’t have to be a player on one of the best contracts in the NHL.

This was such a curious way to go about things. Even if Marchessault doesn’t repeat his 30-goal campaign, a guy who can score 20 goals and drive the play in a depth role at his price is incredibly valuable. Also, the entire core of their team is locked up with only Michael Matheson as a significant RFA next season. This wasn’t a team approaching cap hell; this was a team smashing that panic button after one bad injury-riddled season.

By simply staying healthy, it’s reasonable to think the Panthers improve next year. However, with Marchessault and Smith gone, and Jaromir Jagr’s future in Florida uncertain, that could be over 60 goals out of the lineup without any real immediate help on the way internally. The free agency market for scoring wingers is very thin as well. It’s hard to be optimistic about anyone on this team that’s not going to be on the top line or top power-play unit.

Patrick Kane

It’s difficult to imagine Kane not being an elite fantasy option under almost any pretext. He has 195 points in his last 163 regular season games, after all. He did, however, lose his running mate in Artemi Panarin. I won’t argue that Kane made Panarin better, but I also think it’s fair to say Panarin helped Kane a lot as well; the American’s two best point-per-game seasons (outside of the lockout year) were the two years he played mostly with Panarin as his left winger.

Chicago’s final roster is far from set, but it seems likely that Brandon Saad goes back to join Jonathan Toews. Without another significant scoring threat added – which they can’t do thanks to their cap situation – Kane will be asked to single-handedly carry a line offensively. He can do that, but I think it’s more reasonable to expect somewhere in the 80-point range than the 90-point range.

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The rumour mill is constantly churning at this time of year. One such rumour, which has been around for a few months now, is that Tyler Johnson may be moved out of Tampa Bay. I would assume this has to do both with the team’s cap situation – they need re-sign Johnson, Ondrej Palat, and find a third defence pair somewhere, with about $23 million to do so – and the emergence of Brayden Point last year. Should Johnson be moved, it seems inevitable that Point is locked into a top-six role.

I think now would be the time to go and trade for him in a dynasty league. If you try to get him the day after Johnson is (potentally) traded, you’re likely to be rebuked.

I just want to hear from the readers, particularly owners of Point in keeper/dynasty leagues – what type of trade would entice you to trade him if you know he was potentially playing with Nikita Kucherov next year? Hit me up in the comments.