I'm so confused. Cernak and Rutta are the same player, and one is enough. Like, what?
We have nothing to do until next Tuesday.
Because of this, I will take your post one step further. Based on The Athletic's player cards (as objective of data as I'm willing to look for), Cernak played to a $2.1M salary value this year, meaning he was worth 3.1M less than his contract.
Meanwhile Rutta was paid $2.8M but was only playing to $0.8M level (league min), so he was worth $2M less than his contract.
If we're going on straight up player value, to the team on the ice, Cernak is more valuable. But if you're talking about being
less bad in terms of destroyed value, Cernak is, amazingly, the worse asset.
I think we all agree that if we want to be slightly less dogshit next year (which may be the only realistic goal), we need to UFA sign or trade for some defensemen that can stop plays in the D zone and ideally also make a play with the puck once they do that, at least more than our corps did this year. Mukh may be ready, but he'll be young and volatile. We need to move out at least 1 or 2 more of our dudes or else we'll see more of the same next year.