Hatter of the Beach
I’m the real hero
Are there any players on your radar that you think the Wings should target as stop gap/reclamation projects?
If we are lucky enough to end up with Lafrienerre or Stutz, I think a reliable second line center would be a very pressing need from a development standpoint, as we likely can’t put both our pick this year and Zadina on Larkin’s Wing, and at this point I think it’s clear that Filppula should not be the second line center from a development standpoint. Two players that I think could be had on affordable deals could be....
A) Alex Galchenyuk for 2 years, 7.75 - 8.5 million dollar deal
Or
B) Granlund for 3 years at 4.5-5 million per
both players can play center and offer an immediate upgrade to the 2nd line, while likely being able to be had for cheap(ish) and without huge term. This would allow us to roll out something like
Lafrienerre-Granlund-Mantha
Bertuzzi-Larkin-Zadina
Fabbri-Filppula-Rasmussen
Helm-Glendenning-Timashov
Smith
which in my mind looks a TON better than some iteration of this
Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha
Lafrienerre-Filppula-Zadina
and allows us for much more balanced scoring with two interchangeable top lines (relative to us), a much better looking third line, and sheltered minutes for Zadina and this year’s draft pick. They’re also nowhere near good enough to boost us up more than a few points, so we can keep tanking, only this time we can surround our future stars with at the very least middle 6 NHL talent instead of the corpse of Val Filppula.
Thoughts/alternate suggestions?
If we are lucky enough to end up with Lafrienerre or Stutz, I think a reliable second line center would be a very pressing need from a development standpoint, as we likely can’t put both our pick this year and Zadina on Larkin’s Wing, and at this point I think it’s clear that Filppula should not be the second line center from a development standpoint. Two players that I think could be had on affordable deals could be....
A) Alex Galchenyuk for 2 years, 7.75 - 8.5 million dollar deal
Or
B) Granlund for 3 years at 4.5-5 million per
both players can play center and offer an immediate upgrade to the 2nd line, while likely being able to be had for cheap(ish) and without huge term. This would allow us to roll out something like
Lafrienerre-Granlund-Mantha
Bertuzzi-Larkin-Zadina
Fabbri-Filppula-Rasmussen
Helm-Glendenning-Timashov
Smith
which in my mind looks a TON better than some iteration of this
Bertuzzi-Larkin-Mantha
Lafrienerre-Filppula-Zadina
and allows us for much more balanced scoring with two interchangeable top lines (relative to us), a much better looking third line, and sheltered minutes for Zadina and this year’s draft pick. They’re also nowhere near good enough to boost us up more than a few points, so we can keep tanking, only this time we can surround our future stars with at the very least middle 6 NHL talent instead of the corpse of Val Filppula.
Thoughts/alternate suggestions?
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