I’ll reply to you and u/primetimey on this because I don’t wanna make two comments.

For his cap hit, I’m not sure if you don’t understand the cap or I’m reading into your comment wrong. But him playing in the AHL means absolutely nothing to our cap. He could be paid 48m per year and play in the AHL and it means nothing. And for his cap in the NHL with our injuries we have the cap space to keep him until Hanzal comes back.

The reason we should have picked up Alzner when he was sent down is because we had the cap and theoretically needed a defensemen and still could use him.

Now let’s say we did pick him up 2 days ago, as of November 16th we would be missing Klinger for 5 weeks. As of 2 days ago we will still miss him for 23 more days. In 23 days as of 2 days ago we would have had played exactly 10 games. Which is the number of games needed before we could have sent him back down through waivers again. This all being with him missing the game against Edmonton because the waiver time expired that day at noon.

Karl Alzner would be sent back down through waivers on the night of the Chicago game, cleared it and then we just used him for free. And then we have a defenseman who can lead Texas and teach Texas defensive hockey.

We could have claimed Karl Alzner, paid the probably 50k fee to Montreal (that doesn’t hit our cap) used him till the end of the Chicago game. Stayed under the cap. Got a defensive defenseman to play 3rd line. And gave up nothing. The timing to get him for essentially free was perfect.

The only reason I see us trading for a 3rd pairing maybe even 7th defenseman is to

A) move Honka because we are going to be getting close to that issue soon

B) Alzner would have not made it to Calgary in time for the game