If only we got another defenseman who's elite defensively and logs 20+mins a night also.
Trotz signed Stamkos for 8M, that should be firable. And Sergachev is awful for the money. Give JBB a raise.
Yeah, you're right, our left side seems a fair bit better, if reports on Moser can be trusted. I'm expecting McDonagh to be 80-90% of what he was when he left, but that's still good enough to be trusted to shut guys down. We're taking the gamble that McDonagh/Cernak can be close to what it once was. It's probably the best gamble available to us -- that duo doesn't get the credit it deserves for 2 cups. (Cernak, it appears, is still paying for those cups physically)
Up front it seems pretty marginal. Guentzel definitely seems better than Stamkos at 5v5, although Stammer did go on a run at the end of last year. (So either JG is better or A LOT better, depending on which was the mirage.) I guess the saving grace is we HAVE seen the PP be absolutely lethal without Stamkos. I think we're gonna need to do that again to be a lot better.
On another note, someone in another thread brought up how we (reportedly) asked Stamkos to waive a long time ago for Jack Eichel. This might go all the way back to Yzerman. We know the team has its own analytics that nobody else knows about. You have to wonder if maybe Stamkos did not score so highly on something internally. The team has been prepared to lose him many times, it seems.