Uhhhhh
Karlsson + Chabot + Stone + Duchene plus all the young players coming up. We would have easily been a competitive team.
Anyway, get off Melnyks and Dorions *****.
We were not competitive last year with all those players. Most of our prospects are still very raw and will take a while before they are solid and can handle lots of nhl minutes. Batherson & Chlapik are really the only 2 who i'd say are ready and maybe Jaros..
We got screwed by Ryan's contract among other terrible signings. As a small market team with low ticket prices & sales wouldnt allow us to have all the below players without losing a lot of money each year, which unfortunately for us with our cheap owner prevents us from spending to the cap.
EK for 11mill
Stone for 7-8
Duchene for 7-8
Chabot in a year for 6-8
Smith for 3.3
Ryan 7.5
Ceci for 4-5
Goalies for 7
EDIT: Forgot Burrows @ 2.5 mill. What a stupid trade and even worse signing...
The bolded especially hurts. I was pissed at the return for EK but now im more ok with it seeing Tierny looking like an awesome 2nd C, Demelo as playable, Balcers and Norris with good potential, and picks as future gravy.
Once you get past your emotions the return we got for a player we (wouldnt/couldnt/didnt want to re-sign/didnt want to spend/etc) was actually pretty good considering we could have ended up like NYI who got squat for Tavares.