let's see... If we moved Price, Weber and Patches in an full scale ground up rebuild...
To Vancouver:
Price, Benn, 2 of JDR/McCarron/Carr (12M)
To Montreal
lottery protected 1st (if they win lottery, habs get 1st & 2nd 2019 instead), Virtanen, Markstrom, Eriksson (11.4M)
Habs get another lottery pick (no worse than 9th), young large-framed winger with high upside, a decent 1B goalie with 2 years left on a cap friendly deal and a veteran with strong ties to current head coach (Eriksson is a cap swap, but adds value in fit with Julien)
Nucks get long-term solution in net, Sedin retirement & dumping Eriksson makes it easier to swallow cap hit, a solid/cheap depth dman and roll the dice on depth prospect. Linden/Benning bet on fast incoming beevy of elite young players to give them the cap flex they need to afford Price's cap hit and still add other talent (could see them make a run at Tavares) while banking on Price giving them the vezina/hart level net-presence to expedite the return to playoff hockey.
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To Edmonton
Weber, Byron, Shaw (13M)
To Montreal
lottery protected 1st, RNH, Russell, Sekera (15.5M)
Habs get lottery pick (no worse than 12th), top 6 C, two veteran LD's
Edmonton gets top-pairing fixture, veteran speed and grit for top-9. Chia gets the anchor #1 dman you know he covets, and veteran shake-up.
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To NYI
Pacioretty, Markstrom, conditional 2nd rd pick 2019 (if pacioretty doesn't re-sign/extend), (8M)
To Montreal
lottery protected 1st, Bellows*, Ladd, Czisikas (9.35M)
Habs get lottery pick (no worse than 12th), quality top-6 prospect (with family ties to habs), veteran W overpaid but with grit/leadership qualities and an overpaid 4th liner with high character qualities.
NYI get a cap friendly elite winger to help entice Tavares to stay (a consolation pick should patches walk), a cheaper replacement in nets for Halak (with solid upside), and dump two burdensome contracts that make both Tavares and Patches extensions more do-able.
*would take any one of Bellows, Ho-Sang, Dal Colle.
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Net result:
3 additional lottery picks (giving us 4 of the top 12 picks in a draft with good high end talent in top-10), a few quality prospects and a few bad contracts (but all with veterans that have strong work ethic and/or ties to Julien).
In each case, the lottery pick is 1st overall protected (not sure any GM would be willing to give up shot at Dahlin), but in that case we get 1st and 2nd unprotected in 2019
Calgary (Price), Carolina (Price/Weber), St.Louis (Price/Patches) and Florida (Patches) are other possible destination where similar type deals could be explored... key is that we get the top 15 picks & top 6/4 quality prospects in the exchange, taking on bad contracts as necessary to make it work.
Ladd - RNH - Galch
Drouin - Danault - Scherbak/Virtanen
Lekhonen - Czisikas - Gallagher
Hudon - Froese - Eriksson
(Virtanen/Scherbak, Deslauriers, Bellows)
Sekera - Petry
Russell - Juulsen
Mete - Alzner
(Reilly, Schlemko)
Niemi
Lingren
lineup isn't really much worse than we started this year with, maybe even better depending on how much our own young players progress... Julien and staff can then focus on building the culture they want to establish from the ground up.
bolded players, and assuming that we can translate 2-3 of our lottery picks and 1-2 of our 4 second rounders into solid top 9/top4 NHLers, should give us a pretty impressive and talented roster in 2-4 years... one with a great cap structure given all of the ELC/RFA players in the top-9/top-4 + expiring contracts of Ladd/Eriksson/Czisikas.
provided Lingren can cement himself as a #1 by then, we'd be well set up to go on a run of contending.