These are always my favorite plans. Here, it's super easy. Just make 6 huge deals and everything is fixed. If I can figure it out, how dumb can they be?
What are you giving up for Tarasenko that St Louis would accept and would top all other offers?
How do you figure there would still be cap space to make significant additions? Are you taking back zero salary in a Voracek deal?
Is there a Defense? Or is that the answer to all of my other questions and Pavel Kubina is on a flight out here to retake his throne?
Next year’s salary cap is estimated at $83M. Remove the following off of next year’s payroll:
Lehterä
Simmonds
Weal
Raffl
Elliott
Neuvirth
Folin
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That leaves a little over $31M in cap space heading into next year. Say you resign Konecny(6/5.5M) and Provorov(8/6.75M) long term. Resign Laughton(2/2.75). Sanheim takes a bridge deal at (2/2)That leaves around $15M left with this roster.
Giroux-Couturier-X
JVR-Patrick-Konecny
Lindblom-X-Voracek
Laughton-X-X
Weise
Provorov-Ghost
Sanheim-Gudas
Morin-Hagg
Macdonald
Hart/X
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Yes, Patrick and Lindblom are due for extensions the following offseason, but MacDonald, Weise, and Gudas are up and open an additional $10.7M. That would easily cover those two and leave additional money. It’s also likely the Flyers move some cap if they take on a big salary player this offseason.
If St. Louis is rebuilding and looking for futures, I don’t think anyone could beat what the Flyers could offer. I won’t make an offer but will just list pieces that could go for either Tarasenko OR Pietrangelo.
Morgan Frost
Joel Farabee
Phil Myers
Sam Morin
Robert Hagg
Jay O’Brien
Wade Allison
Mikhail Vorobyev
German Rubstov
Tanner Laczynski
Isaac Ratcliffe
Felix Sandstrom
2019 1st(Likely top 14)
2020 1st
2019 2nd
2020 2nd
Cap dumps would also be included in this deal, even though it isn’t necessary to fit them in. But that would open up additional cap room.
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So for example, say it was 3-4( 16 listed) of the pieces listed above+MacDonald for Tarasenko, that would leave this roster with $12M in cap space.
JVR-Giroux-Tarasenko
X-Couturier-Voracek
Lindblom-Patrick-Konecny
Laughton-X-X
Weise
Provorov-Ghost
Sanheim-X
Morin-Gudas
Hagg
Hart/X
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That’s a roster you can very easily fill out through trades, free agency, and call ups and turn it into a cup contender. If you want to deal Voracek, like I suggested earlier, it makes things more complicated.
I personally don’t think you’d have to retain too much, if any, on Voracek. He consistently produces points and would be able to find a top line role somewhere and do the same. They could take back some salary in that deal, but it could be the salary of a player who could contribute. Voracek doesn't have negative value. He could definitely bring back a different top 9 forward or top 4 defenseman back in a trade if they went that route.
Gudas is also a player who may not finish out his contract here. Trade him for futures and then go out and acquire someone at a cap hit less than 5.5-6M in:
Parayko
Brodin
Muzzin
Martinez
Carolina Defenseman
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Fletcher has so many different ways he can go with this, you can’t really rule anything out as a possibility with the resources at his disposal.