Firstly, wow, what a civilized thread. Good job keeping this calm and logical guys. I dig i
Secondly I'm totally on board with bringing in a RD to keep the kids boiling in the minors but I'd prefer one with a little more experience. A true stop gap. Maturity and poise over potential for that role this year for me. Rather than bringing in someone who could potentially fill the role but hasn't gotten a chance with their team, I'd prefer someone who had had that NHL experience. Dotchin would be perfect for the role. 4th this year or 3rd in a future draft would work for both teams.
Again, other Lightning fans may disagree with me but I just don’t think that would cut it. A year from now and we’d be looking for the exact same thing and would gladly trade a 3rd or a 4th to get it. It’s one thing to move Dotchin if we’re getting a roster piece that genuinely makes us a better team now, or even something like a 2nd that we could throw in a package or at least have a solid chance of using to draft a player who will be better than Dotchin down the road. But the odds of a 3rd or 4th round pick even making the NHL are low enough that I don’t see why we’d give up cheap, experienced RHD depth to acquire one, especially when such depth will be our biggest need in a year.
After next season our NHL depth chart on the right side will consist of Sergachev, Dotchin, and two guys in Cernak and Foote who have yet to play a shift in the NHL and who are unlikely to get more than a cup of coffee this coming season unless one of them
really impresses in camp and/or Girardi falls off hard. Cernak and Foote should both be better than Dotchin in the long run but there’s no guarantee they’ll both be there by the season after next, nor is there a guarantee that neither will get injured at some point. And while we’d obviously prefer to bring in someone better than Dotchin to help stabilize the right side of our defense after Stralman, Girardi, and Coburn walk, doing so would require trading someone with a full NTC (which we obviously can’t count on) or letting Gourde walk (which we obviously don’t want to do) to clear the necessary cap space. So as much as we’d rather not have to rely on Dotchin until we have a better option, need his roster spot for a better purpose, or are at least offered something that would make us want to take the risk of having to find a replacement for him, I don’t see why we’d move him.