A few of my thoughts. I've been interested to read the last few pages. There's definitely an initial "holy shit we're gonna tank" feeling when we trade our best offensive D for some draft picks before the season starts. The knee jerk feels inevitable from me. As it stands, we have Jake Gardiner as our #1 PPQB. I get the trepidation, but I know the Borg will figure something out, just as they did last year. At this point, I'd sure as hell rather have hole at PPQB and maybe #1 RD than have 6 more years of Hamilton at $9M. That'd limit our ability to do anything else with the roster.
Regarding Jesperi, I do think he'll get better. It happens all the time that a young player usually gets better and better. It's not always, but it happens frequently, especially if the player gets good coaching (check), confidence, and opportunity. Well last year JK didn't get the opportunity, but he kept saying how much he loved playing here and for Rod. Next year he gets the opportunity. It's possible he will regress, but the far likelier outcome is that he plays a little better for the next few years. He's probably our longterm 2C or 3C, and at $4.82M, I'll take that.
We saw Skjei get better and better in his years here, and same with Troch in his 2nd year than after his first TDL stint, and these were older players than JK. One of the biggest market inefficiencies, IMO, in NHL front offices is moving on from a guy at a depreciated asset cost after not having much patience with the player. Sports is a cutthroat game. Brady Skjei was that way. He cost a low 1st and has been a solid top 4 RD for us for years. Excellent value. We saw a player with great fundamentals - excellent skating, sneaky shot, big body, and good hitting who also came with mental miscues and mistakes. Give him a steady partner for a few years and confidence (and also take him off the first pair) and boom.
Another market inefficiency is the Ruutu and Gleason foul. This is when you're scared of losing a player who plays an important role for your team, and you're willing to pay market or over market cost to retain that player, even when you know it'll hurt long term. I think Philly did that with Ristolainen. Well, that's a bad example because he was a terrible player to begin with. We have two UFA forwards approaching 30, and the cost to keep them very well may be term until they are 35+. Probably the best thing to do long term is to look for other options. It's scary because right now we look like we're boned. There's a "jump off the cliff" moment where you don't have anyone filling these holes and we're out our #4, 5, and 6 scorers. We're doomed. But there are 31 other teams out there. Some of them will also have UFA players. Maybe after day 2, some of these players haven't gotten a deal and say "f*** it I'll take less term" and you get a guy for a much better deal. Or, more likely, you have teams go over the cap or right to the cap with UFA splashes and now they can't re-sign their RFAs. There's always a small market of Arizonas to help out your problem at the cost of draft picks. Now, it looks like the Borg wants to be in this group, but at the huge bonus of us being a CONTENDER. So we can take the cap dump (Marleau) to improve our team long term, or we can take the RFA at a depreciated asset cost (Teuvo, Jesperi, 2022 RFA) who wants to play for a really good team with the 2nd best coach in the league (next to Cooper).
Bottom line is it will be scary like this every year, but we'll magically end up with these low cost acquisitions. It's how we somehow got Stepan (who was a 2C the year before) for nothing, how we got Teuvo for nothing, how we got 3rd overall pick for a low 1st and 3rd, and how we got 1 year of a PPQB for $1M, then got a free 2nd+3rd+4th.
