What is it people want? Have you seen the UFA list?
I thought people wanted to rebuild? You want Bozak signed to a stupid deal?
Be it by trade or by UFA signing, I expect 4 NHL Cs to be playing in Montreal next season, making sure at least Drouin, who is still a young player with development time ahead of him, plays his natural position instead of being moved to the 1C spot to cover the idiocy of our GM. I want young players to be in the good chair. I don't want JDLR to play on the 3rd line. Neither do I want Drouin playing 1C. And ideally Danault should be used as a #2-3 C. Not be the only natural C of our team that's NHL-calibre.
If it's Bozak so be it. At least it'll mean the f***ing Drouin to center nonsense has come to an end.
If you want a full-scale rebuild, go get young Cs like Viktor Rask or Tomas Hertl, and trade a guy like Pacioretty.
Right now, the following chairs are filled:
Drouin - ______ - Gallagher
Domi - Danault - Lehkonen/Scherbak/Byron
Hudon - ______ - Lehkonen/Scherbak/Byron
Deslauriers - JDLR - Shaw
_____ - Weber
Mete - Petry
Alzner - Juulsen
Price
Niemi
To fill the 3 blanks, you have Max Pacioretty, 2 of Lehkonen, Scherbak and Byron, picks, and the UFA market, to make sure every toung player gets a proper spot to actually develop without feeling too much pressure or being out of position.
I don't care how you do it. Fill the spots. And don't do nonsense like misplacing young players in those holes when they aren't ready to play those roles. How many prospects have we burned that way already? Overpaying should be the least of our worries, we're the richest team in the league and have 20M$ to spend. There's not a single team in the league that got stuck with the salary cap because of bad contracts for a lengthy period of time. It's all a myth. There's always a way to get out of a messy situation.
The ideal guys in those slots to fill those voids are O'Reilly/Stastny while Kotkaniemi hopefully develops the way people here expect him to, a guy like Bozak or a young C acquired for assets while Poehling pushes Danault to the #3 spot, and a guy like de Haan who can be had for a reasonable contract and play solid minutes. You still need good vets to surround the upcoming guys. And if Timmins was as much of a genius in this draft as you guys suggest, the young guys should develop in no time anyway. Right? RIGHT?!!!