^I don't buy it.
It's a business negotiation and when you have the upper hand you utilize it. The players do so in many ways with arbitration and when they hit free agency.
Players 2nd contracts have become crazy but a lot of that is because the league has become a young mans game so I can understand it but you are blowing things a little out of proportion.
Treliving is just working to manage the cap because he knows it's hard to win when too much of the pie is taken up by so few. Instead he has built a team where the wealth is spread out and we now have some depth.
Gaudreau, Monahan, Lindholm, Backlund and Neal are all signed long term and Tkachuk is expected to sign for a number of years also.
That means we have our top 6 locked up for at least 4 years and if Bennett and Jankowski break out we can allocate some of Frolik and Stones cap hits to them and Tkachuk.
We have 3 young d prospects that can hopefully step in and provide some cheap production within the next couple years so outside of solving the long term goaltender situation the team is pretty well set up to compete over the next handful of years with solid depth and no outrageous contracts.
That's smart cap management and is the only type of reputation Treliving will/should receive.
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