unfortunately, seattle has the benefit of following a team that executed this process flawlessly in vegas to use as a guide. they took the highest asset value exposure from every team or they forced that team to buy that player back from them with draft picks and prospects. skjei will likely be the player targeted from us because he's valued at a 1st round pick. if you look at the other exposure options on our squad, who else can make that claim? if jake bean could have yielded us a 1st at any point over the last 2 years, we probably take it. jesper fast does not play with the same intensity for this team as he did for the rangers. i think we bought the retirement contract with him. that isn't to say he's useless or bad or whatever, but you're very clearly not catching him on the way up. gardiner isn't even really worth discussing. between the injuries and his skating speed, it's over for him. if you're a veteran defenseman getting scratched from playoff games, it's pretty self-explanatory at that point. i doubt he even attempts to play anywhere else if he's bought out.
vegas also took a lot of shots on guys who were believed to be talent capped in the bottom six and gave them the opportunity to play up. an equivalent for us would be maybe taking foegele if he were available and playing him 17 minutes a night. young guys who at worst were going to be not embarrassing to have in your lineup but your scouting team believes there's more there.
in this case, i think we are likely to see francis and waddell work something out to keep skjei here unless ronnie is so salty he just wants to take him to hurt the team. we probably have some guys francis would like to have back in the bean, geekie, cotton, etc. class that could probably entice him. carolina will have to stack blocks high enough to reach first round pick, though. we'll be alright though, folks. our prospect pool has great depth even if short on stars. francis having a connection to a lot of them is a good thing for us.
