Perhaps....but you've got 12 guys signed for $65.8 million, leaving about $13.7 million in cap space to sign another 8-10 players. You have 3 defenders under contract for that season. While there may be a slight increase in the cap, that too is probably nothing that will help this situation. You guys are going to have to shed some salary and/or not resign guys in other circumstances you'd prefer to keep.
I'm not saying it's impossible. What I am saying is the roster's going to look significantly different. So, back to my original point, if I'm Tyler Johnson and I'm staying to be part of this well constructed team, there's a lot more uncertainty about the future than he might be comfortable shouldering.
Callahan, Coburn, and Girardi all come off the books; none of them is much of a loss and all can easily be replaced from within. Stralman will also walk; he’s a much bigger loss but with McDonagh-Sergachev as our second pairing going forward all we really need is somebody who can play effectively with Hedman and either Foote or Cernak should hopefully be capable of handling that cushy assignment (even Jake Dotchin did well in that role his rookie year and he’s barely an NHL defenseman at this point.) Then we’ll probably be looking at trading Miller after next season, but the Lightning were a top team before he arrived and again finding someone who can play with Kucherov and Stamkos isn’t going to be a challenge.
At that point we should be able to keep everyone else assuming we bridge Point and Sergachev. If we can’t do that then we might be looking at losing Gourde which would be a shame, but as with Miller we were a top team before he arrived and have the depth to replace him from within if necessary. The important thing is that we are in no danger of losing any of our core and have enough NHL-caliber depth in our farm system to replace the complementary pieces as needed.
Which is precisely why our recent draft strategy has been to eschew high risk, high reward prospects for players with lower expected ceilings but higher expected floors. We’ve got our stars already; what we need is to fill in the holes with solid depth players who can over perform on their ELCs. Our farm system may not have a lot of high end talent left but we’re absolutely loaded with guys who will become effective NHL players, and the way we scout some of them will overachieve and be significantly better than expected.
So in short I’m not really worried about our cap situation going forward unless we make a huge acquisition like Karlsson. Yes, we’re going to lose some complementary players, but the only guy I’m really concerned about replacing is Stralman and both Foote and Cernak show enough potential that I think at least one of them will likely prove effective opposite the best defenseman in the game. The rest of our losses will be in areas that are easy to replace (complementary wingers and bottom pairing defensemen.)