Both will almost certainly be back. Those aren't easy contracts to move, especially EK. I think they need to re-evaluate their defensive strategy in general because both those guys looked significantly worse here than they did elsewhere.
Seems quite likely. Anyone who expected EK to put up numbers which were dramatically better than what he did this season was delusional to begin with. Likewise anyone who didn't expect his defense to be (almost?) as much of a negative as his offense is a positive. We'll run it back next season with Letang, EK and St. Ivany on the right and unless JSI does a John-Marino-type sophomore regression he'll be OK. He just needs to prove that his 6 weeks in the NHL reflected his true ability and he wasn't way over his head. I was calling for him to be here long before the call came, and I suspect he'll be no worse than adequate as a #6.
On the other hand....
Anyone who expected Ryan Graves to be Brian Dumoulin (in his prime) 2.0 was delusional to begin with -- looking at you Kyle Dubious -- but, like EK, he performed exactly as should have been expected. Graves has NEVER been the "defensive" half of any pair and it was ludicrous to expect that he could be thrown in with 58 or 65 as part of a "balanced" pairing.
However, what the haters fail to see is that the suckass player they THINK Graves is, is the suckass player POJ ACTUALLY is; Graves, warts and all, is way better than clueless POJ no matter what the half-wits think.
Even so, there is NO WAY this team can come back next season with Petts, Graves, Shea and POS and still think that they don't have a major problem on that side. Put Graves with St. Ivany; that's OK though Graves is pricey for being just a #5 defenseman -- but the one thing this team needs most, even more than "shooting Tristan Jarry into the sun" or dumping the Sully-approved deadwood (Acciari, Carter, Nieto) from the bottom 6, is a REAL #1 LH defenseman and one of those is not likely to just magically appear.