How is it a different issue if Abdelkader is being counted on to score goals?
Abdelkader has the 4th highest cap hit among forwards and 3rd highest salary this year. He's one of our key veterans. If he's not a driver, who the hell is? Old man Zetterberg? Frans "career high 20 PP points" Nielsen? 20-year-old Larkin? Or Nyquist and Tatar?
So if there's no drivers, how the hell is this team pushed against the cap? And why can't we blame Abdelkader for soaking up that cap while not performing? If you need to pair him with an elite center, but you don't have any room for an elite center...
I'm just struggling to understand why there's so much critical armor built around these players because we call them ALL complimentary players.
Zetterberg is arguably still a driver and paid like one. Not everyone can play together with him though. Green is kinda paid like one too. No one else is really paid like one of those key pieces. Abdelkader/Nyquist/Tatar have complementary player salaries, because that's what they are. I think the hope was that Larkin would be more of a driver and he's not there yet.
This team is pushed against the cap in part because it needs to be to make the most of LTIR savings, and in part because we're still on the downturn of a really succesful run and have a lot of players on bigger contracts than they'd be worth if you reset everything before last season and gave them new contracts this summer. Kronwall is way overpaid for what he brings currently. Ericsson too. Howard is way too expensive not for his play this year, but for how little he has played. We also have very few players on league minimum contracts, simply put we don't have much in the way of "borderline NHLer" talent on the team, we have lots of players that are easily NHL caliber and probably 7-8 forwards that can be counted among the best 3rd liners in the league (Helm/AA/Tatar/Nyquist/Vanek/Larkin/Abby).
The guys expected to produce reliable offense no matter what in this league don't make 4 million dollars, they make twice that. It's not critical armor it's just reality. How many players on Columbus have seen their numbers go way up this season compared to past years? That's why you don't throw a guy like Nyquist or Tatar or even Abby under the bus because they struggle in a trainwreck year like this. When the team starts getting their act together again you may suddenly see some of those complementary players actually putting up good numbers, say like an Atkinson is doing for example.
