DeAngelo is a great player but our top 2 right d spots are taken already, the 3rd spot can be filled in with Lundqvist or Keane for a lot cheaper price. If DeAngelo wants a team friendly deal I'd love to keep him but with him not getting much of a deal this summer I doubt he is gonna take a discount and i dont blame him for that.
Who are they taken by? Trouba has one. Fox you hope can be a point producer like DeAngelo, but he is not as of yet. Again, if DeAngelo is going to be a 55-60 point player, do you know how rare that is?
He is not going to do a team friendly deal, but who cares? He CANNOT go anywhere. He is RFA, not UFA. I am pretty sure that between Gorton and JD, they can present enough market comps that will not pay him over the moon. Then see how the cap situation sorts itself out in a couple of years.
People are acting like DeAgelo is going to go sign a Trouba-like contract with a team.
With me it's more the cost to keep him vs an entry level player like Keane or Lundqvist. He is a great offensive dman but he will never be slotted ahead of Trouba and Fox and will be trying to get paid like he is.
We have no idea if Fox will ever be able to produce offensively like DeAngelo. We have no idea even if DeAngelo will continue to produce like DeAngelo. It is not like Fox's defensive game has been standout. What we do know is that we Lundqvist has not stepped a toe onto North American ice yet no one has any idea of what Keane is.
Why not deal with who is here and actually producing instead of who is not and hopefully will be producing? There is absolutely no rush for this. And after this year, they will have a few more years to figure it out.