He should choose Carolina over the money though. Lock for first line with Aho/TT in next few years.
We should pay the man his money.
He's solidified a legitimate 1st line with Aho and TT. He adds muscle to that line, preventing teams from running our star which allows Aho to operate more freely. And, right, he also has pretty damn good vision (look at the pass to Aho yesterday on the PP for a prime example), and has an ability to find the back of the net. He's worth the money he's looking for, because he gives us something we desperately need and have really been looking for since.... Heck, since Cole was a beast back in the mid-2000s. Guys like him don't grow on trees and you have to hold onto them when you find them.
And all this posturing would make sense for a team that is operating near the cap and has legitimate financial decisions to make, but we're a team barely scraping the cap floor, we have the most cap space in the league by a country mile, and our owner has north of $1.5 billion in the bank. The only financial issue we have is that we want to be cheap, and judging by the reaction to this on social media, the entire fanbase knows it. Dundon will have himself a PR nightmare if he lets Ferland walk for financial reasons.
Give the man his money. And don't be worried about Aho, Svech, goalies, etc for the future, because teams make this work all the time. If Toronto can find a way to make Nylander, Marner, and Tavares work with the roster they already had, we can make what we have work as well. Take care of now, and the future will take care of itself.