They're both relatively young. We are not signing Loui Eriksson here, they are bonafide top line players.
I'm not disputing their value as hockey players, I'm arguing that it's a poor way to build a championship team. We will not be a competitive team for at least 3-4 years at which point any FA we sign will be 30-31 and continuing to decline throughout our cup window. We should be looking to sign a bona fide top liner in a few years so that we have them in their prime throughout that window.
Signing a first liner as a UFA is not a once in a lifetime opportunity. I think we should be targeting a UFA at the earliest in 2021 depending on how the team looks. Imagine if this team isn't competitive until 2024-2025 which is well within the realm of possibility. Do we really want one of our first liners to be 32 years old at the
start of that window? Not only will he start to be starting to decline but we won't even have a potential trade chip for when we decide to tear it down and start another rebuild.
It's not that it wouldn't help the team now, it's that it's short sighted and wouldn't help this team win a cup. We would do much better to use that cap space to acquire picks both from cap dumps and signing short term UFAs to sell as rentals, and then sign a UFA in his prime when we're ready to compete.