Quote:
Originally Posted by GoJetsGo
Why? We still need another d-man under contact (which leaves a spot available for a young player making a step) and with Wideman and Engelland's salary gone it's not that outlandish if he wants to play here and will sign for a reasonable clip.
Having Stone on the bottom pairing would give tremendous depth.
That has nothing to do with the fact we also need to add a forward. There is time and space to address both needs.
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I think the value in having a very strong group of 4D is they can all handle a modest amount of minutes, allowing us to break in some weaker/younger D on a 3rd pairing that is heavily sheltered. I'd rather take the $3.5M for Stone's 15-18 soft mins per night and put it towards a scoring winger. There's a lot of pressure on Bennett, Jankowski and Lazar to pan out as we don't have high-end draft picks in the coming years to help bolster our offense so they've just become much more important.