A look at older experienced scorers for the team

Everywhere you look, Seattle fans seem to think this team needs a proven top end scorer.  So I decided to take a look at the league, and what might be out there.

As you will see from the lists below, there are really only 11 players that I can see being realistic trade targets.

This is based on a few factors but for the sake of argument we're going to mostly exclude players in the same conference and players on teams we think probably won't be looking at trading skilled veterans.


Since everyone wants a real veteran, and most people I have talked to say he has to be a 19 year old, I started there.  Below is a list of every 19 year old forward in the league, sorted by points per game, since that would seem to be the best indicator of a "scorer".  Of course this is not he only indicator, since all three players that came from Lethbridge last season had good marks for scoring, but turned into shut down players for Seattle.

In the table, a player highlighted in yellow is someone that has played less then a season and a half of games (0-108), orange is someone that has played more then that, but less then two full seasons (109-144), and of the players that don't fit that criteria, red is someone currently in the western conference, making them not as likely to be a trade option.

If you make the cutoff at a half a point per game, that narrows it down to 7 players.  Of those, Curtis Lazar is still in Edmonton (Edit: Yes, sorry Ottawa. Edmonton is his junior team) with the Oilers Senators and Jay Merkley is leading the league in scoring.  Neither of those players seem likely to be available.  That leaves 5 players.

With so few available, I decided to look at 18 year old forwards.  Getting this type of player would probably give Seattle the player for two years, and possibly a 3rd (though that is probably unlikely depending on quality).

The legend is the same, but the number of games is a little different.  I put the yellow cutoff at 75 games, and the orange cutoff at 100 games.

Using the same logic as a half of point per game, you only get 6 players.

As you can see, the list of potential "veteran scorers" is a pretty small one. This list will most definitely change and will likely get bigger as teams play themselves out of contention and more teams look to sell before the deadline.