I would be ok with replacing Bowness with Trotz.
Short order items. I think Radulov and Sekera are gone. I want to lose Studenic and Gurianov, they could be used as trade pieces. Raffl and Namestnikov can come back at their current rates but not higher or for long term. Ideally Khudobin could be traded. Wedgewood at his current rate is acceptable.
If Bishop is LTIR and Khudobin is traded, this leaves us with a significant amount of cap actually. Correct me if my cap mechanics are wrong but something to the tune of 25 million. Money is necessary to resign Oettinger and Robertson. Resigning Raffl, Namestnikov and Wedegwood as well would probably leave maybe 7 million left?
We're at 20 skaters, to get to 23 we need to bring up one more from the minors if I'm competent at counting. Now we're at maybe 6 million cap left. I think ideally to spend on 1 forward and 1 defenseman. The bigger you go for one, the smaller you can go for the other, and vise versa.
The defensemen I'd like to target include the following. Gustav Lindstrom, Dylan Samberg, Logan Stanley, Zach Whitecloud, Haydn Fleury, Carson Soucy, Jacob Moverare. Though this list is not exhaustive. Ben Chiarot would also be interesting to me but for my expectation that he will ask for more money and more term, probably neither of which I would be interested in giving. There's also the question of how big a step up Thomas Harley can take. He will probably make the roster but whether or not he is ready for top 4 minutes is unknown.
For forwards. I think any gratuitous scorer is probably fine. I typically have a preference for forwards who can go both ways, but the team really lacks gratuitous offense, even at the expense of other things. As to which gratuitous scoring forward is the best to acquire via free agency or trade with this budget...someone else who is looking out for scoring forwards would almost certainly know better. I'm very open to suggestions. I'm a bit afraid of signing any older forwards to term though, so guys like Perron, Palat, great forwards but I'm a bit scared of how long they might ask to stay around.
Robertson - Hintz - Pavelski
Unknown - Benn - Seguin
Namestnikov - Faksa - Raffl
Peterson - Dellandrea - Glendening
Harley - Heiskanen
Lindell - Hakanpaa
Suter - Unknown
Oettinger
Wedgewood