I appreciate the work and thought process that went into this.
I nevertheless, disagree.
1) The Sens do not lack elite top-6 talent; they ooze top-6 talent. They may lack 1 focal player, but have the forwards to finish 30th, 31st , 50th, 51st and 80th in scoring. That's way above average... and scoring was not the problem this season despite key injuries to MacArthur and Turris up front.
2) MacArthur is barely a prominent player on this team and they could live without him. We already 5 better top-6 forwards than him. A smarter strategy is not to replace a healthy MacArthur with a better and more expensive winger. It's to play MacArthur in the role he was signed for and hope that he has a healthy & productive enough season to be selected in the expansion draft so that we can get that contract off of our books.
3) All of this is about forwards, why? We might walk away from Wiercioch, our bottom pairing could use work and we'll eventually need a long term solution in goal. D & G are more important areas for this team to address in the next 14 months than scoring winger.
Wiercioch and Cowen were trying to be top-4 d-men on a team that was missing a #2. They were also trying to refine their games with another young kid who was trying to get his game together.
The position is not very important to our success anymore because we have 5 better offensive forwards ahead of him. He is our 10th-12th best player.
Top-6 / Top-4 / #1
Best forward, best D-man, #1 goalie... great places to use cap space.
#2-4 forwards & #2-3 D-men... good places to use cap space.
#5-6 forwards & #4 d-men... not so good places to spend cap space.
2nd line LW is literally the least important of all of those 11 positions (I pick on LW because it is typically barren of talent). Next most useless is 2nd line RW, because defensemen and centers usually have more impact.
These are our top-11 players at those key positions. These are the players who help us win. The only deals longer than 3 more years are highlighted:
23 Stone 75-23-38-61 (2 x $3.5)
26 Turris 57-13-17-30 (2 x $3.5)
26 Hoffman 78-29-30-59 (RFA)
29 B. Ryan 81-22-34-56
(6 x $7.25)
31 MacArthur 4-0-0-0
(4 x $4.65)
23 Zibanejad 81-21-30-51 (1 x $2.63)
25 Karlsson 82-16-66-82 (3 x $6.5)
31 Phaneuf 71-4-28-32
(5 x $7.0)
22 Ceci 75-10-16-26 (RFA)
30 Methot 69-5-7-12 (3 x $4.9)
34 Anderson 60 (31-23-5) 2.78, 0.916 (2 x $4.2)
Now start thinking about importance to winning. Are Ryan and MacArthur closer to the top or the bottom of your list? ... because two 2nd line wingers are almost always going to be closer to the bottom of my list. 2nd line wing is where I fill out my roster, not where I sign people to silly long term contracts. It's where I save money to spend on more important positions. It's where I give talented rookies a chance to compete for an offensive role. Having one of these contracts isn't that big a deal, but having two sucks. Signed a 3rd big money player to a long term deal in such an important position and you're looking at crunch down the line that costs you a Stone, Karlsson, Hoffman, Zibanejad or a #1 goalie.
