That forward group looks porous. We're paper thin.
But we'd at least have the cap space and flexibility to fix that. That's the point. However, Eberle and RNH were/are not the answers, and that should be clear by now.
And once Sekera's healthy, who comes out? Green doesn't fit!!!!
The lesser of Nurse or Benning. There's your trade chip to acquire a young, skilled winger- and no, I don't mean a prospect. As we all know, D hold much higher value, and we should easily be able to turn one of them (preferably Nurse) into a cost-controlled forward. The depth exists to replace him this year, as you note, and then you have Jones, Bear and a ton of others waiting in the wings.
If our lineup ended up something like this:
Maroon-McDavid-RW
Lucic-Draisaitl-Strome
Caggiula/Slepyshev-AA-Puljujarvi
Jokinen-Letestu-Kassian
Caggiula/Slepyshev, Khaira
Klefbom-Larsson
Sekera-Green
Russell-Benning
That also sets us up to have incredible competition internally among wingers; Caggiula, Slepyshev, Puljujarvi, Strome and even AA can all play there, and as the needs of a game or series dictate, we can sub in the right guys. It's the only way to mitigate the cap crunch- lots of options, lots of young talent, and then you plug and play as required. That's how Pittsburgh won two Cups and that's how we're going to have to do it.