Stamkos(hoping) and Nylander and perhaps this years pick would push him to third line,and this is assuming Bozak is gone.
As far as contracts are concerned.If Kadri is earning $5 million as a third line C I'm almost sure that would be used as a bargaining point when Nylander is looking to get paid.
Stamkos coming could only be viewed as a investment into the very near future. The rebuild and cap flexability suffers but the rebuild advances slightly. Possibly even to early when development time projections go slower than expected in certain cases.
Signing Stamkos has cons but only in the short term because we won't immediately be contenders.
The evaluation of it being worth it to pay him $10,000,000 for for only making it to the playoffs as opposed to being contenders would be weighed very carefull we could reason.
If he wants to come to the leafs you do it and give him the "C" with a slight reluctance only to the fact you are walking away from a homegrown rebuild. So its not that serious a dilemma.
We still need to have a #1 defenseman and a #1 Goaltender added to the mix. Sparks should be given the chance to take it on a good team though.
Someone could easily make a case for not signing Stamkos for the betterment of a true rebuild. The more drafting early we can do over a period that is not stonewalled by a definite term the better off the future is too.
Its a tricky situation in terms of it being early in the rebuild for entertaining that cap hit this early.