Quote:
Originally Posted by Kovaz
Who do you even play at LD without Hanifin? If we can't afford $4.9M for top-pairing minutes, we may as well rebuild. If you want to argue we should upgrade the #1LD spot, I can see that argument. But if we're dumping Hanifin for cap reasons, we're setting ourselves up for failure. You really can't go much cheaper than a $9M top D pairing.
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Like I said a lot over the course of the season, this will be Treliving’s most difficult offseason. His cap was already in bad shape, but he just had to add Toffoli’s contract in to the mix without any sort of retention.
So now it’s up to him and his group to find value all over the lineup. There are plenty of No Trade clauses in the lineup that are a major cause for concern as it could severely limit what Brad can and cannot do, but the fear of going into next season with nearly half the team having to be made up of league minimum replacement parts is a possibility.
Obviously that’s not ideal as we actually want to improve the team. So, this is where management will have to get creative and find cheaper alternatives. If I was to venture a guess, something along the lines of what the Jets did with the Trouba - Pionk swap. It doesn’t even have to be Hanifin, but exploring moves that saves the team considerable cap space while not impacting the team’s overall performance will likely have to be accomplished. Hanifin being a LHD would just be an easier position to fill IMO, at least compared to a RHD like Andersson.