To all those pro-Barrie right now, let me just hit you all with a dose of reality.
Barrie is 29 years old and heading to a free agency where he is probably the second most coveted Dman available. He’s going command top dollar on the market, likely >$6M with >5 years. It’s unlikely that he takes any sort of discount to stay here either. There’s an absolute laundry list of reasons why we shouldn’t re-sign him: age, value, affect on farm system, history.
Signing UFA contracts for players on career years at 28, 29 years old is something we should be cautionary at. Lucic, Neal, Ladd, Demers are all contracts that were made recently and now are looked upon the worst contracts in the NHL. Barrie is likely to be no exception. He’s already the slowest Dman on the team and will likely only get slower. He’s also a complete liability in his own end and often needs to be bailed out by Nurse.
Barrie is also a Berlin-Wall-esque barricade to Bouchard. A player that could be as good or better than him. Even if he never matches Barrie’s point totals he’s already a far more complete defender than Barrie is.
As for signing Larsson and RNH, they represent something a lot more unique than Barrie. Larsson is a complete defender and RNH, despite his warts, is a guy that can play centre or wing, PP, PK, has plus speed and a deadly shot. They’re also far more likely to accept a team friendly deal.
I’d far rather spend $8.8M re-signing Lars and Nuge than spending that money on an unreliable defender that’s 29 years old.
The additional monies saved allow us to make trades and make FA signings that can fill our actual holes in our lineup, you know, like 1LW, 3LW, and 2LD.
PS: I meant to have this as a reply, but because HF doesn’t exactly work perfectly on iPhone safari I had to type it out in notes first lol.