Quote:
Originally Posted by LWcrowfoot
Stone would be tied with Lindholm as the third most important winger behind Gaudreau and Tkachuk. Sole possession of third if Elias played centre.
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Stone is
far better than Lindholm and is honestly better than Tkachuk. He's a monster at both ends of the ice and is probably a top-15 forward in the entire league. He'd be an enormous acquisition -- skill-wise, he's basically what Tkachuk can be in his prime, but available right now.
The Flames' tiers of players with Stone would look like this:
Level 1: Gaudreau, Giordano, Stone
Level 1.5: Tkachuk
Level 2: Lindholm, Monahan, Hamonic
Level 3: Backlund, Rittich, Hanifin
-- the rest --
Also, it's definitely doable under the cap. 100%, even assuming that Tkachuk and Stone combine for $17ish million in salary. If the cap goes up to $83 million as projected, the Flames would still have about $2 million in cap space if they dealt Brodie and Frolik for picks/futures in the offseason -- which is certainly feasible.