Nylander would be playing with out superstars on special teams.
Depth ruined us and we have no long term solution at 2C. Transitioning Nylander there now while also providing a constant threat and pulling away top 4 Ds from one of the top 3 lines may be the solution. We dont have the players to make a net neutral 3rd line at this point.
What crushed us was our lack of meaningful depth. Not only were they not producing, they were also not playing well defensively. Buying defense is FAR cheaper than buying offense, and it's just as valuable. It's the reason why I believe Chayka was actually doing a good job because of the lack of funds in AZ.
If you have two elite lines, you're already ahead of virtually every team in the league other than Tampa & Pittsburgh. The question then becomes do you sewer one of those lines to have one elite one, and two good ones, or do you try and be like Boston/Colorado (who are two of the only 4 teams in the league I think are as good or better than us) and STACK your top-6 with all your stars and play net neutral with the bottom-6.
It's so easy to look through FA, our team, and undervalued players on other teams and grab guys with strong defensive impacts at under $1M cap. You could honestly run something like this and it would overall have a better impact than last season with a much lower cap hit:
Mikheyev(RFA)-Matthews-Nylander
Hyman-Tavares-Marner
Robertson-J. Larsson (UFA)- Engvall
Rodrigues(UFA)-Jankowski (RFA)-Spezza(UFA)