I personally don't see the need to rush acquiring a top-6 forward this offseason, unless a good opportunity presents itself and makes sense for us. The fastest way to screw up a rebuild is to start blowing a bunch of cap space overpaying older B and C tier free agents. Of the names I've seen thrown around (Stamkos, Reinhart, Marchessault, etc.), I think there's a less than five percent chance we sign any of those guys.
I think the top-6 group will naturally improve next year just by virtue of all of the kids being a year more experienced as well as (hopefully) better health overall, along with Cutter being on the team. I'm expecting bigger things from Mac and Zegras, and Leo should be more effective with a full offseason to train and build some more strength. Terry should bounce back a bit as well.
Getting a top-4 defensive minded dman is a much more pressing need given how young and inexperienced the blueliners are. If Verbeek is serious about accelerating the trajectory towards becoming a playoff team, then icing all four of Minty/LaCombe/Zellweger/Luneau isn't going to happen.
In a way, we shouldn't need a top-6 RW because we don't know what we have in our top-6. This year's top-6 talent was actually eight players deep, but injuries ruined that development of improvement. The scary part is when we lost Rico at the TDL, our GF/game dropped from 2.66 to 2.0. Rico was tied as our 3rd best scorer on the team with 42 points, and he only logged 60 games for us last year.
We're replacing LW Rico with LW Cutter, but I don't think Cutter will be putting up big points next season as a rookie. So adding a veteran top-6 RW would give the team an extra boost in offense.
As for defense, we need a defensive d-man, top-4 RD. While our ES GA/game before and after the TDL was somewhat similar, but our PK GA/game before and after the TDL had a significant drop.
ES GA/game before the TDL = 3.541
ES GA/game after the TDL = 3.762
PK GA/game before the TDL = 0.984
PK GA/game after the TDL = 1.476
The thing about our PK isn't that we lost RD Lyubushkin at the TDL, but Rico too. Rico was good at the FO dot with a 52.9% win rate, which is the best on the team. Carrick was our third best at the FO dot with 51.0% and also a part of our PK unit, but he too was traded away at the TDL. Our 2nd best FO guy is Mac at 51.7%, but he doesn't PK b/c he's not quick enough at the moment. Everyone else is 46.2% win rate.
We need two forwards who can win at 50% or higher on the FO dot for our PK unit. Maybe Cutter could be one of those guys, but we still need another. Hopefully, that top-6RW can win FO's and be good enough to be on the PK.