I'm not a huge Stone fan, I recognize that his advanced stats are pretty terrible. However, you need to take a step back to look at what's going on. We just signed 5 top-4 d-men. Stone's inking was on a bargain contract for $3.5 million at a none too severe term of 3 years. Essentially he's excellent injury insurance and if everything goes well, he would be one of the best #5-6 defencemen in the league. This also locks in our bottom pairing where we now have the option to run with Kulak or Bart and not worry about it being a horror story.
Hard to be upset with this move. The opportunity cost here is also fairly non-existent. There are literally no UFA ring wingers that signing stone would displace. Like it or not, our forward group needs to develop from the inside. Signing Stone didn't change this fact one way or the other.
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