If they're truly having slim picking on centers, then I suppose I could see them going with Sissons. I still don't think they'd be desperate enough to bite on Duchene.
I like that Cap Friendly seems to remember the last one I did... this is the lineup I got last time, it meets the various contractual requirements (20 players signed, $50.8M already)... although I can see a few players I'd revise on my protection lists today (e.g. Bean).
It's not so much that it's hard to get centers, it's just hard to get any top-6 caliber forwards at all, really. I consciously took Kerfoot and Backlund over some options on D since I figured the D was already full, and I assume Tampa will make some kind of trade that sees Seattle take Johnson. Maybe Seattle also gets Killorn or somebody that way, but I'm not going to try to predict trades, there will undoubtedly be many.
17 forwards:
Jared McCann - Tyler Johnson - Richard Panik
Scott Laughton - Alexander Kerfoot - Colin Blackwell
Jason Dickinson - Mikael Backlund - Mason Appleton
Ivan Barbashev - Colton Sissons - Kevin Stenlund
Rasmus Asplund - Logan Brown - Rudolf Balcers
Zack MacEwen - Nathan Bastian
10 D:
Ryan Graves - Matt Dumba
Nikita Zadorov - Scott Mayfield
Jacob Larsson - Jake Bean
Olli Maata - Radko Gudas
Caleb Jones - Jeremy Lauzon
3 G:
Vitek Vanecek
Jake Allen
Adin Hill
Practically speaking, though, they can't have that many players since waiving 7 of them would be a sheer waste. Maybe there would be a few they could trade, esp. on D, like how we got Emelin after the Vegas draft, but it would be silly to take guys only to lose them on waivers a couple months later. So obviously that's not like a final team, and they'll do other things to mix it up, those are just one sample of potential picks from each team, but it won't be even 25% right in the end, most of those players have multiple equivalents on their current teams and the trades will mix and match everything unrecognizably.
They would have the Cap space to chase a few UFAs, though, so if I'm them maybe I look at short term deals to guys like Stastny, Krejci, Palmieiri, Tatar, Schwartz, Saad, etc. It really feels to me like they need to factor in Free Agency to a greater extent than Vegas did. To me it still doesn't say they would want Matt Duchene, though. Signing some guys like that for 2 or 3 years at $3-5M is a lot more palatable than having a guy at $8M for 5 years who doesn't produce any more than they do. Although I would for sure consider taking Jarnkrok instead, since they have lots of grinders already, and Jarnkrok can play up in the lineup.