Quote:
Originally Posted by Psytic
It's more an adress to the posters that want to back the truck up for every flames player and start a fricking thread.
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Paying Backlund fair value is hardly backing up the truck for every Flames player.
We have 1.5 seasons until Backlund is UFA. Assuming Bennett/Goaltender/Versteeg/Ferland put us at the cap ceiling in 2017, in 2018:
- Tkachuk will be entering year 3 of his ELC and some contingency obviously needs to be in place for his first RFA
- Backlund's own 3.75M comes off the books, so any raise he gets is just that, a raise, not a brand new contract
- Stajan, and Bouma will also be UFA opening up cap space. That's about 5.325 million in extra cap space.
- Raymond's $1.05M buyout cap hit is also complete
- Jankowski will be ready to play NHL minutes at a discount. I'd argue he's ready now to play top 9, and is only buried there because of the curious case of Stajan, Monahan and Bennett.
- Mangiapane, Klimchuk, Poirier, maybe even Lomberg or Dube, will replace the 2.2 million dollar Bouma.
- Brouwer will be on year 3. We'll probably have to suck it up miserably through the final two years of his deal, but losing Backlund
at the expense of Brouwer would suck far, far more than keeping Backlund and not signing a better RW than Brouwer.
Not extending Backlund to a fair value contract would be pretty idiotic. We don't know if Monahan or Bennett will ever reach Backlund's two-way level.