Value of: What's fair, and who gets the most? (Laine, Rantanen, Marner)

[Brockon]

I mean, the answer seems obvious. You let Ceci walk once his awful $4.5 million contract expires and you use that extra money to resign Barrie. Muzzin is the only blue-liner of any value they lose next season, but his loss can be mostly offset by having Dermott slot into 2nd pairing LHD and have Sandin and/ or Liljegren come up on the third pairing.

Problem navigated. Actually without much difficulty. Not going to say I like the Matthews or Marner AAV, but when your two best superstars in their early 20s are your teams only “bad” contracts heading into 2020 you aren’t doing to badly.

So you've got 14.1M coming off the blue line this summer.

You have 11 players on expiring contracts, 7 of them making near league minimum and who will be wanting raises. (Spezza, Mikheyev, Hutchison and Shore being the others)

You have 7 Dmen to re-sign. Assuming Barrie takes a Spurgeon type extension at 7.575 AAV you've now got around 6.5M to sign 6. Liljgren eats 1.4M, because of his performance bonuses. That's 5.1M for 5D. Sandin takes ~900k, that's now 4.2M to sign 4D or 1.2M to give modest raises to those 4D if they were deemed adequate this season and don't need replacing.

Plus raises to Hutchinson, Spezza and Shore or you're replacing all of them with more vets around league minimum. And who knows what an RFA Mikheyev will be worth. That's tight, not impossible.

Fascinating isn't me implying impossible, rather it's me voicing that the cap maneuvering really interests me. Watching the tinkering Dubas is going to have to do with very little cap space to work with is going to be something to follow.

Because of the cap adding meaningful upgrades to the blue line will be difficult. The constant criticisms of the perceived weak defence will continue, unless a forward is shipped out to create cap space.

 

[Brockon]

All people criticizing our FWD signings and complaining about our D next season just fail to grasp the above statements every time.

Once presented, crickets......

Nah, that's me living on the west coast and having been out until 3am PST...

Can't respond whilst sleeping bud. But, there me voicing my understanding of how things sit in Toronto is, in the post directly above without commenting on my perception of how certain players may or may not be suitable for the roles they'll be asked to play. (Jordan Schmaltz isn't a solid NHL dman)

 

[inthe6ix]

Nah, that's me living on the west coast and having been out until 3am PST...

Can't respond whilst sleeping bud. But, there me voicing my understanding of how things sit in Toronto is, in the post directly above.

Without commenting on my perception of how certain players may or may not be suitable for the roles they'll be asked to play. (Jordan Schmaltz isn't a solid NHL dman)

If we have to move a FWD out next season to help out the D, then we will; I suspect Barrie will want 8 or 9 (but lets see how he fits with us this year first); just hilarious of people to think we can't make it work next season just because we have locked up our FWD core.