Has the Vladimir Tarasenko trade heated up the market for Timo Meier?

Matt Larkin and Steven Ellis were joined by Daily Faceoff’s insider Frank Seravalli on Daily Faceoff Live to get an update on some of the names and teams in the trade market, including his top trade target in Timo Meier.

Meier is having a career year with 30 goals, 21 assists, and 51 points in 53 games, and as such, is getting a lot of demand on the trade market, especially considering he’s still in his prime at 26 years old.

Matt Larkin: I just want to get a quick temperature on the Timo Meier situation, just in the sense that we have another big domino falling yesterday. Is there a sense of intensity of teams' pursuit of Meier right now wanting to respond to the Rangers?

Frank Seravalli: I don’t get the sense. I don’t think there’s really an arms race. I think Timo Meier is probably not someone that’s going to linger until the last day, but I don’t know that yesterday’s trade of Vladimir Tarasenko really fires up the engines for everyone.

The Rangers had done plenty of due diligence on Meier, and I believe he was really their #1 fit and #1 target, but the acquisition cost and contract cost to then keep Meier on the back end of it pushed them to go in another direction with Tarasenko. I think they also investigated James van Riemsdyk, looked at a couple other wingers that might be pretty decent fits, and decided that when on the balance of all those things that we talked about, Tarasenko’s the best fit.

Meier still lingers, and it’s going to be expensive, both in acquisition cost and, more importantly, you’re looking at a 7x$9 or 8x$9 deal for Timo Meier at the other end of it.

You can watch the full episode here…