Yeah if they have some playoff success this year I'd be very reluctant to change out much of the core. Who knows how long Sutter wants to stick around? I think it's doable to keep the top 9/top 4 together with a bit of cost savings elsewhere.
Assumptions:
Gaudreau for $10M
Tkachuk for $9M (QO if need be)
Mangiapane for $5M
Kylington for $3.5M
Monahan + Lucic + draft picks for future considerations somewhere
That leaves us about $5M extra padding to work with on the bottom half of the roster (assuming $1M per spot as a baseline), so something like:
$2M to bring back Gudbranson again
$3M for a 3C or LW (if Dube slides into Center). Jury's out on Jarnkrok for me, but potentially bring him back for 3C
$2M for a vet 4C (Cody Eakin type?)
So something like:
Gaudreau-Lindhom-Tkachuk
Mangiapane-Backlund-Toffoli
Dube-Jarnkrok-Coleman
Pelletier-Eakin-Ritchie
Duehr
Hanifin-Andersson
Kylington-Tanev
Mackey-Gudbranson
Stone
Markstrom
Vladar
Could also skip re-signing Jarnkrok, slide Dube to 3C and Pelletier up to 3LW to save another $2M if we needed it elsewhere.
That said, not a lot of room for error - might have to make a tough call somewhere and subtract one core-ish piece.
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