I've running under the thought that the front office wanted to salvage what they could from a potential disaster in Panarin and Bob leaving. This would also seem to give Panarin the signal that they are serious about winning, although I'm not so sure they have any hope of that.
If they sign Duchene and Dzingel, the loss of Bob and Panarin are far more palatable. I tend to think that Duchene is actually more important to the franchise success than Panarin. We've had plenty of time to evaluate our existing group of centers, we were missing a top six center. Jenner is coming around, but doesn't seem like he could fill in on the top line for any length of time in the event of injury. Certainly no one below Jenner on the depth chart you really wanted to move up.
We've taken some huge gambles, but this seemed like the time to do it. If, for some reason, we can't re-sign any of these guys, there is going to be a lot of unhappy people in the organization. Luckily our players are young so it would be rough but we could fill in rosters spots via the FA market and still be competitive until we started drafting again. But there would be no room for poor picks in the higher rounds. We really won't have many ways to get back a high draft pick. We'd have to try and stay a playoff team, otherwise we would have given up top 15 picks for multiple years.