Zoidberg Jesus
Trotzkyist
- Oct 25, 2011
- 3,814
- 0
That is the kind of thing you can say year after year too. I don't necessarily think this team is close to one of the best contenders but i think this year atleast takes long and hard to think about whether to contend or sell. Like it has been noted, East is wide open this season.
Fehr - 1.6m > raise
Johansson - 2.0m > raise
Holtby - 1.85m > raise
Beagle - 0.9m > raise
Kuznetsov - ELC > raise
Ward - 3m > Around the same/raise
Green - ~6m > raise
Hillen - 0.7m > same
Volpatti - 0.575m > bye
That's lots of players on a good contracts that won't be so in the future. You can throw in Burakovsky, Schmidt, Alzner and Carlson among the players that are looking for big raises too in couple of years.
Honestly, you could do the same thing for just about any team. The Rangers have St Louis, Zuccarello, Staal, and Talbot as UFAs, with Stepan, Hagelin, and Miller as RFAs. 46M going to 12 players next year. Montreal doesn't have a lot of important contract coming due, just Galchenyuk and Gallagher, but they've got 54M going to 14 players so they won't have room to add much either.
People keep saying "The East is wide open, this is our chance," but I don't see any reason to expect that if the cap doesn't raise by much, the East will get any less wide open next year. And if we can dump Laich, we'd probably be one of the only teams with enough room to actually improve. I really wouldn't mind it if we sold off Green and got a cheap replacement. We're pretty much guaranteed our playoff spot anyway, and getting some picks/prospects would make it easier to load up for next year.