Time to start throwing the passengers out of the bus...
Gonna be an empty bus before you know it. Same as every year.
If we are talking about players who are
absolutely useful going forward, whose names do you put on the list?
McDavid - Obviously.
Hall - nobody on this team pushes the speed like Hall does. And he's proven he can score. Top five in his position. Pretty hard to upgrade on that, especially when you consider age and contract.
Draisaitl - I said several weeks ago that even though he had slowed down his superman pace, he was still giving opponents fits with his relentless pursuit of the puck. Its been years since I've seen a kid this young impose himself on the game shift after shift. I'm almost afraid to get my hopes up, but man when you watch him play he just looks like the kind of player who is going to be a perennial AllStar in this league. Looks like Forsberg to me.
Eberle - all he does is score. At a top ten rate for his position. Like clockwork. Some people on this board want to make that into some kind of failing, but at the end of the day you need goals to win. Unfortunately three on three is probably here to stay, as is the shootout. Both are areas where Eberle has/will thrive. Folks who think seventy point players are easy to find (and all have well rounded games) are dreaming.
Personally I'd try to hold onto RNH as well. Everyone else is either replaceable or not absolutely useful going forward.
Defense is easier because we have three guys with still some hope for their careers, and three guys who are done like dirt. Keep Nurse, Klefbom and Davidson. I guess we keep Sekera too since he isn't awful and he's signed. Everyone else is either not absolutely useful or easily replaceable.
Chiarelli, at best, has one good forward unit and three decent (but inexperienced) defencemen. If I'm him looking at the cards in my hand, I'm thinking fml.
I would dangle the first round pick in 2016.
Then Yakupov.
Then RNH.
Then Eberle.
Of course I would trade anyone else on the roster (not mentioned above as absolutely useful going forward) if I could get anything useful in return. But the only guys who might bring anything would be Purcell, Pouliot, Hendricks, Letestu, Fayne and Schultz .... and lets be honest, we aren't getting much for that assortment.