Speculation: Expansion Draft

[LTIR]

Bear could boumce back. He has playing sense

He looked pretty good tonight so yeh. Im just saying that losing a Dman other than Nurse to Seattle would not be franchise crushing.

 

[SwedishFire]

He looked pretty good tonight so yeh. Im just saying that losing a Dman other than Nurse to Seattle would not be franchise crushing.

Hitting home a good 20 min D man is hard to get. I dont think its a good idea to loose a dman. It would act. be Barrie in that case. To expensive next contract

 

[ImmuneEH]

I'm glad I'm not the GM because I don't know how I would manage our RD heading into the off-season. There are two approaches in my opinion: long-term and short-term.

Short-term: Letting Bear go and moving forward with Larsson, Barrie, and Bouchard. This is a 'safer' path short-term but you're letting go of a kid who hasn't entered their prime and moving on with vets whose prime years are soon behind them.

Long-term: Opting to keep Bear and letting Barrie or Larsson walk. There will be growing pains in the short-term imo, but you're banking on Bear entering his prime which hopefully entails him being a solid top 4 D night-in and night-out.

Why I choose to keep Bear:
This is what I see as the long-term approach. Bear is 23 years old. He had a stellar rookie season (relative to expectations) where he stepped up in a big way when Larsson was injured for a month and gave us solid minutes. He's sitting at 106 NHL games played at the moment. He's yet to enter his prime. Meanwhile, Larsson was on a steady decline since that 2016/17 season and has only recently been playing pretty well. I don't think we should let recency bias cloud our judgment. I'd just hate to draft a kid outside of the first two rounds that actually made the NHL and let his prime years go to some other team. He's a smart two-way D and I believe in him.

My hope is to give Barrie an extension of no more than 3 years term. If Barrie wants more term or prices himself out I'm fine with letting him walk (which I think was the original expectation) and giving Larsson a short extension.

 

[Aerchon]

Why is there any real talk about moving or trading Bear?

Our RD is relatively shallow.

Bouchard is on his ELC and while I want him playing more we still need at least 4 nhl quality RD for depth. Even resigning Barrie and Larsson only gives us that "Bear" minimum.

If we can't resign either, which imo is likely, moving Bear is just silly. Not to mention he is far from a finished product at 23 and moving him right now is just a terrible idea.

 

[Cloned]

I'm honestly at the point where I'd tell Bouchard to spend the entire offseason practicing on his off-side.

Nurse - Barrie (3 year deal)
Lagesson - Larsson (2 year deal)
Bouchard - Bear

If you can get that to work, you're set for years.

Not to mention the timelines for Broberg and Samorukov mean they'd come in to replace Barrie and Larsson just in time.

 

[Broberg Speed]

Our defense is bank. Sign both Barrie and Larsson and hold on to the rest for as long as you can.

Going to lose one good young defenceman in the expansion, that's a given but not much you can do about that. Seattle can only pick one player. Give them a good veteran defenceman and a couple of good young defencemen to choose from. Bite the bullet but hang tight to as many of our best young assets for trade bait.

Next year what do you think other teams will offer for young potential top 4 defencemen that are comparatively modest cap hits when those clubs have their own players to sign, if they are up against the cap ceiling? Every team will have difficult decisions.

Let RNH walk for goodness sake if his agent isn't accommodating, trade for a force up front for picks and a young defenceman. We could have the cap space to do beautiful thing that will push us over the top. A little patience and some forethought will have this franchise set for a decade but one wrong move and we suck again.