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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Losing Smith, Patches (with 2 mil retained), and Dadonov actually only gives them an extra $10M in cap space, making for about $13M total going into next offseason (Smith being off the books is already calculated in their $2.5M cap space this offseason). Now, because you traded out Patches and Dadonov, the roster goes down to 9 players, so they need to sign 13 players for $13M, and within those 13 players for $13M they will be attempting to replace what Patches, Smith, Dadonov, and McNabb bring to the team.
Losing as many young players as they have and their upcoming first hurts that even more, of course. With Stone, March, Pietrangelo, Lehner, and Martinez all over 30 going into the next five years and so of those guys nearing 40 by the end of it, that’s a tight window with a rough cap position to manage it through.
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Look, I’m not saying it’s not a pickle.
But they have four core forwards, two core defensemen, and a goalie locked up for the foreseeable future. Philosophically, I don’t think you want your core to be larger than four forwards and two D anyway.
In a do or die, tie it up or go home scenario, you can only have 6 guys on the ice anyway. And nobody but Brent Sutter would try 3F 3D with the goalie out.
So it makes more sense to spend your resources on the 4th forward. They play closer to the net and might actually score the goal to keep you alive - Eichel, Stone, Karlsson, Patches, Pietrangelo, and Theodore is a frightening task to defend in the last minute of a game.
Karlsson is the shortest, at 6 ft 1, and they’re all over 200lbs. That’s a lot of beef to look past if you’re an opposing goalie. All six are extremely high-skill players, they skate well, they can all score from distance.
All four forwards are 30-goal players.
Vegas will trade what they have to to make themselves compliant, and in doing so recoup some of the prospect capital they’ve lost in these deals. They knew that going in.
We would have had a variant of the same problem had Try Hard closed the deal, and it would have been a good problem to have.
Now, however, our big problem is the homegrown franchise player who drives the entire boat offensively is a UFA, and there have been no updates about an extension since the player said “I’m not commenting on it now that camp has started.”
And we haven’t even discussed how this debacle may have further alienated Tkachuk. “We talked, it’s cool.” Yeah, and my wife really isn’t mad about anything.
Great job, Try Hard.