Sounds good, thanks for sharing your thoughts. They all make sense (as I'm sure you know already, obvi you don't need me to tell you that). Longer post but enjoy having these more well-thought out discussions rather than the nonsense you sometimes see on the main boards (and that I replied to a short while ago smh)
Anyway I would push back on two macro level things:
1) I really disagree that you can assume Zaitsev will be able to be easily dumped.
2) When you see "major roster surgery" upcoming I really don't,
I'll keep this post short as I feel I'll just be repeating myself & I understand that long posts can be tedious to read.
1. I never said it will be
easy to dump Zaitsev. What I did say is the cost will be lower next year when he only has one year left on his contract, especially after his signing bonus is paid. It will cost something, but less than it would if he had 2 years of term remaining. By some of your own fans metrics one year of cap for Zaitsev = 2nd round pick. So 2 years = Qty two 2nd round picks, 1 year = Qty one 2nd round pick. I'm not trying to identify the exact return here. I'm just demonstrating the concept.
2. By major roster surgery I mean that the Senators will not by keeping all the players they'd like to in 2023-24 (i.e., Debrincat, Zub, etc.) if they also have to pay Chychrun's AAV. I have a spreadsheet, but including it will result in a real long post. You can visit the Senators website and see the spreadsheet & exact numbers. I'll give you the name of the thread and the post # if you'd like. This is simple stuff and all the players with expiring contracts and everything else has already been incorporated. Nothing has been missed.
The other thing is that if Dorion was willing to move Sanderson, Grieg or Pinto, the deal would have been done in the summer. There would have been absolutely nothing stopping him from pulling the trigger. I think the team is poised to run with mixing in their 2 good prospects in JBD and Thomson in to the lineup both of whom are RDs.