Another one. This is easily the wildest August the NHL has had in... Well, since they had the playoffs in them. That one's a bit unfair. You got a grade on a curve. But it's not just that we're having trades, it's the hugeness of them. And this is a big one. It took until August 23rd, but we finally know where Jaroslav Askarov is going to play hockey next season. Steve, I don't know who that is. You should, because this kid is who many are calling the best prospect goalie in hockey. And now, to all the Sharks' Truthers out there, he's a San Jose shark. The trade is as follows. The San Jose Sharks receive Jaroslav Askarov, a 2025 third-round pick, originally belonging to Colorado, and forward, Nolan Burke, The Nashville Predators acquire, forward, David Edstrom, a 2025 first-round pick that's from Vegas, and it's conditional, and goaltender Magnus Crona. Okay, let's break all that down. I don't know if you watched hockey last year, but the San Jose Sharks were pretty bad. There was a while where they weren't that bad, and I started talking about like, Yeah, Shark's true there. They're pretty good. This was after they lost the first 10 games of the season or whatever it was.

They allowed 10 goals in back-to-back games. Remember that? You could see why they would want another goalie. Well, they're rebuilding. They're rebuilding hard. They actually just got the first overall pick just now, Maclin Cellebrini. For a rebuilding team and a team that is so deep in the rebuild like that, for them to give up futures, they better be getting futures back. They are here. Listen, prospects are often magic beans, and goalies are even more so. They're jumping beans. For right now, if you're signing up for a goalie of the future, this is the kid. So the Sharks gave up futures. In a way, they bought. But this isn't the trade deadline, so you shouldn't look at it that way, buying and selling. It doesn't make sense. It's like the Penguin's Jets deal from yesterday, by the way. That's not a buying and sell deal. It's just two teams trying to make the best of an interesting situation. Now, this Jaroslav Askarov stuff has been percolating ever since the Nashville Predators sent a massive contract extension to UC Sarras. In free agency, the Predators also signed Scott Wedgewood, $1.5 million per. Not exactly a guy you want to bury in the minors unless you're going to carry three.

You could do it. Detroit did it. It was weird. Or you could just do the really simple thing and leave your 22-year-old goalie in the American Hockey League where he probably ought to be. Well, Ascara wasn't down with that, and he seemed to make that pretty obvious. A precarious situation for the Nashville Predators because he was guy who the Predators picked 11th overall. A concerning predicament for the Nashville Predators because they picked him 11th overall in the 2020 NHL draft. 11th is high for a goalie. That very rarely happens anymore. Heck, it's rare you see a goalie go first round at all, let alone 11th. I don't really have a problem with the predators making that pick at the time. You don't know what the future holds. There's a few options here. Number one, Askarov turns out to be the goalie of the future. He's better than Sarras, and you keep him. Great. Number Number two, Sarras is great. Askarov develops, and he's great. They're both like, Hey, this is great. And they stay together, and then you have two great goalies. Great. Number three, Sarras is great. Askarov doesn't want to stick around in the minors, and he's still very good, though, so you can just trade him for a lot of value.

This is why you draft the best player available. The Predators chose option three, or Askarov did. I guess they both did. I think Garreslav Askarov would still be a Nashville Predator if they agreed to play him on the Nashville Predators and not the Milwaukee Admirals. Speaking to Milwaukee Admirals, he was remarkably consistent for them. As a 20-year-old and a 21-year-old over the last two seasons, he's been their extremely young and effective starter, with the team's best safe percentage in both seasons, and in both seasons, that was 9-1-1, playing 48 games in the American League as a rookie and then 44 last year. He did play two games in the NHL last year, and he allowed two goals with a 9-43 safe percentage. You could say he was fired up, and he did pretty well. This is a good goalie, is what I'm trying to say. This is a smart bet for the shark. Now, it does have the potential to work out very interestingly. Dude, the San Jose sharks got shelled last year. Like, McKenzie Blackwood did admirably in net for them, just facing a billion pucks every night and stopping most of them and still losing vast majority of the time.

For Yero Slava Askarov, it could be like, All right, so you want to play in the NHL? Here you go. Play lots of games for the San Jose Sharks. Who finished last and just acquired Cody CC. Barry, why are you talking like that? I don't know. You're right. So is this trade going to make the Sharks good right away? I doubt it. Is it going to make them a competitive playoff team next year? Also doubt it. Are there a bunch of teams in the NHL that would like to be in the position the San Jose Sharks are currently in? Yeah. If you look at this from Cam Robinson of eliteprospects. Com, they have Maclin Celabrini, Will Smith, who was a fifth overall pick, Quentin Musty, Yeroslav Askarov, Sam Dickinson, William Ekeland. Or was he the fifth overall pick? Maybe they both were. So do the Sharks give up some futures in this deal? Yes, and we'll get to that. Are they particularly high-end futures? There's a prospect who was picked in the first round, but last in the first round. And a first round pick that could be anywhere. It's unlikely to be particularly high.

It could be, but it's very unlikely. Whereas the Sharks have a redonkulous amount of blue-chip elite prospects. Like the site You see? What else do they get in the deal? They get a third round pick. Hey, it's a pick. It's a lottery ticket. It's a scratch off if you don't get anything with it. They also get a forward, Nolen Burke. He's very young, early 20s, played mostly in the ECHL last year. Former Pickering Panthers, so I'm cheering for them. Now, the Nashville Predators. What are you up to? I'm not going to throw this out there. I don't think they're done in the least. The easiest one here is Magnus Crona. He played a few games in the NHL last year. Probably He wasn't of, and when he did, he was on the San Jose Sharks, so poor kid didn't have much of a chance. Pretty sure they made him play against McDavid, too. Hey, I know you're new here and we're not very good, but here's Superman, essentially. Hey, you're made of kryptonite, right? You're not. Well, best of luck. Goalie prospect going out, goalie prospect coming in. That makes sense. Then there's poor David Edstrom, who was the 32nd overall pick in 2023.

The poor kid is 19 years old. This is already the second time he's been traded in the NHL because the Vegas Goldenights picked him with the last pick of the first round in 2023. They got the honor of doing that because they won the cup. Dude, what's the point? When the Vegas Goldenights draft a guy in the first round, there's got to be someone at the table who's like, Should I even put the name on the jersey? They're not keeping them. Dude, look at this. 2017, Cody Glass, gone. Nick Suzuki, gone. Eric Brandstrom, gone. 2019, Peyton Krebs, gone. 2020, Brandon Breson, still there. Look at you go. Anyway, where were we? Oh, 2021, Zack Dean, gone. 2023, David Edstrom, gone. And Trevor Connolly, they just picked him 19th overall in June, but give it time. In their entire history, the Vegas Goldenights have drafted eight guys in the first round, and they've kept two of them, meaning They've traded six of them. A few of them ended up being pretty good. Do they care? No. They won the Stanley Cup. Oh, but nick Suzuki. They won the Stanley Cup. He beat them. They won. What aren't you getting?

They won. The way that Edstrom went from the Vegas Goldenights to the San Jose Sharks and now to the Nashville Predators, by the way, he was traded. Poor kid, he was traded in March. He was traded from the Vegas Golden Nights with a first-round pick in 2025 to the Sharks for Thomas Hurdle, a third-round pick in 2025, and a third-round pick in 2027. Thank you, HockeyDB. All that to say he was in the Thomas Hurdle trade. That's why the Sharks had him in the first place. Listed at 6'2, 181 pounds. He's a forward. How has he done in Sweden so far? Seven goals, 12 assists for 19 points in 44 games this past season with Frolunda of the... Wait a second. I don't like them. I'm wearing a Jurygarden jersey. It's not a particularly high-scoring league. His team's leading scorer had 43 points in 51 games. Max Friedberg, a fifth-round pick from 2011 by the Ducks. That's That's a fun fact. You know what's cruel here? I think there's a way greater than 0% chance. He's traded again. Dude, look at what the Nashville Predators are doing. Look at what they've done this summer. Stamco's big money.

March So big money. A lot of you might have forgotten about this one. Braided Shade, big money. They did pretty well against the Vancouver Nox, who did pretty well against the Edmonton Oilers, who have done pretty well against everyone else. I think the preds are trying to win now. I mean, there's nothing wrong with trying to win now and also building future assets and keeping them for the future. But heading into the trade deadline, there's a chance they trade this fork in again. This guy might get traded three times before he's 20. Then there's the first round pick with all these conditions. Oh, jeez. Chris, I need I'm an adult CJ. Oh, good. There he is. San Jose is sending the Vegas 2025 first rounder in this deal, we know, but will have the option to flip it to their own first round pick if it falls in the top 10. If I'm reading this right-So wait, let me make sure I understand this because this reads like the San Jose Sharks have the option to give up their own first round pick if it happens to be less valuable than the Vegas Goldenights first round pick next year.

Yeah, okay, I'm not going to lie. I don't think that's going to happen. In order for that to happen, the Vegas Goldenights would have to miss the playoffs and either be worse than the San Jose Sharks or win the lottery or both. Dude, I just don't think that's going to happen. I don't think that's going to happen. Vegas might screw around to win the Cup again. Who knows? Or miss the playoffs entirely. It depends on who's injured win-win. But there's another thing given to the Nashville Predators in this deal. I think they're just going to parlay at the trade deadline or maybe even tomorrow. I don't know. The way this August is going, maybe they do it tomorrow. Look, I'll be honest. I don't think Nashville did awesome here. I really don't. A lot of it depends on what that first-round pick turns into, where it lands, how you use it. But to get a 30-second overall pick, a mystery draft pick that's probably going to be mid-20s, if we're honest, early to mid-20s, and Magnus Crona, who probably maxes out at backup, All that as return for arguably the best goalie prospect in hockey.

Definitely top three. It's not that great. It's okay. I don't even know if it's okay. There could be. There's a universe where this parlays. It's funny. Think of it this way. Is it great value for them? No, absolutely not. I don't think it's great value for them at all. But look at it this way. How good is Nashville? How good was Nashville last year, and do you expect them to be better? I think the answer is, yeah, they were pretty good last year, and you expect them to be better this year. Yeah, most people, I think, would think that. Okay, well, here's the thing. Jaroslav Askarov played two games for them last year, so losing him doesn't immediately affect how good or bad they are. Unless, obviously, they run into really bad goalie injury problems, but I mean, that can happen to anybody. And now you have these two first-round assets that you could use at the trade deadline. But then this little voice in your head says, But you could have just used Yoroslav Askarov. And that little voice has a point on account of I think Yoroslav Askarov is more valuable than two late first-round picks.

But because of Askarov's demands, the fact that he wants to play in the NHL now. The fact that if he wanted to, he could just be like, All right, I'm just going to leave. I'm just going to leave and go play somewhere else. That affects things. It makes things complicated. Maybe Nashville made the best of a tough situation. And the best isn't always the best, but it's the best you could do. This is one of those ones that in a few years, I think we might look back and be like, Oh, Nashville did not too great there. But if they win before we get there, we're not going to care. Here, I'll use a Nashville example. Tana Jeanot going to Tampa Bay Lightning for all the pics in the world. Is that a good deal for Tampa? No, they got killed on it. You know why we think that? They lost. First-round pick for Barclay Goodrow. First-round pick for Blake Coleman. Were those good deals at the time? No. They won back-to-back cups. No one cared. No one cared. Who did those picks even turn into? Who cares? Not a single Tampa fan, I can tell you that.

And cherry on top for San Jose Sharks fans, Jaroslav Askarov signed a two-year contract extension today at $2 million per, and that doesn't kick in until next year. So you have a dirt cheap goalie who could be pretty good for you over the next three years. Like, unreal price. How big of a factor is that going to be for San San Jose, I'm not sure. I'm not sure they're going to be a Cap team exactly over the next three years. But I mean, what's wrong with having Cap space? You can always use it for something, whether it's to contend or accrue assets. Tidy from San Jose, I'm not totally sure about the Nashville Predators. What do you think? Leave a comment in the comment box down below. For now, that is it for this one. Thank you very much for watching. Click like. If you like this video, click subscribe. If you really liked it, tell all your friends, Hey, a lot of people have been asking, Steve, where's your Patrick Line A video? I didn't make one. I spent three days in a recording booth making an audiobook and lost my voice and I was sick and everything.

But here's a great thing. Sdpn, we're a network, right? We got lots of friends. So the Line A video was made by Adam Wild and Chris Johnston. And Drew, can we link to that? Can we look? There it is. You can watch it.