Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenLantern2814
Who cares. Shrink the hell out of the middle class of pro athletes. Stars should make star money. You don't get in trouble paying star players what they're worth, you get screwed by the Troy Brouwers of the world making $4.5M.
The actual middle class shrinking like it's in the drier. Anyone who doesn't like being a member of the 'screwed' middle class of the National Hockey League can see if Russia is right for them.
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IMO right now, a strong salary structure would start with something like (brackets are just some examples of fair value):
#1C - 7.5M (~Kuznetsov)
#1D - 7.0M (~Subban)
#1W - 7.0M (~Wheeler)
#2W - 6.0M (~Okposo)
#2C - 5.75M (~Backlund)
#2D - 5.75M (~Ekholm)
#1G - 5.75M (~Crawford)
#3W - 5.75M (~Saad)
#3D - 5.0M (~Gudas)
#3C - 4.25M (~Couturier)
#4D - 4.0M (~Martinez)
#4W - 3.75M (~Cogliano)
#4C - 1.5M (~Letestu)
So that would be in terms of holes in the lineup:
Saad-Kuznetsov-Wheeler
X-Backlund-Okposo
Cogliano-Couturier-X
X-Letestu-X
X
X
Ekholm-Subban
Martinez-Gudas
x-X
X
Crawford
X
Obviously, it still needs to be adjusted to the actual individuals on a roster, but the above represents about 95% of the cap ceiling into the top 61% of your roster. You have serious depth issues if you can't fill out the rest with ELCs, cheap bridge contracts, and buy-low vets.
McDavid, for what it's worth, is easily worth the cost of a Kuznetsov+Cogliano+14th Forward. That's ultimately what it comes down to. So basically you would have to trim the above forward roster to:
X-McDavid-Wheeler
X-Backlund-Okposo
Saad-Couturier-X
X-Letestu-X
X
You only run into problems when you pay the 'X' guys what they aren't worth.
The other factor is that six or seven or eight or nine years from now, the cap will rise, but McDavid's cap hit may no longer be the largest. So you'll be able to either add that Cogliano back into the mix or account for the inflation of the values of the Backlunds or Okposos.