my gut tells me that pesce could be shown the door at some point. i believe it was rumored that he quietly asked to be traded at some point during the last couple of years or was that debunked? he would be perfect for the way winnipeg is going to have to win. they don't have the horses to gallop and if there ever was a player that needed to play on a gallop it's patrick laine. they have a vezina goaltender and are coached by paul maurice and the rest of that thought should predictive text. pesce out and bean/honka/keane in would disperse the payroll differently in a way that we probably need. surprisingly, haydn fleury starting to appear on the verge of some meaningful hockey might give us less pause in a move like that also.
i like pesce a lot, but he's at his best in a structure that doesn't tax his skating as much because his feet are fairly heavy. i just don't see that as the vision we have for the composition in the long term. a few of his comps through 4 years are johnny oduya, eric dejardins and roman hamrlik and those seem fair to me. but honestly, if we get what we're supposed to get out of the rest of our guys we could better recover from that loss than we could losing anything at all from our forwards. i don't think slavin, hamilton, skjei, fleury, gardiner, bean/honka/sellgren would cause us any issues whatsoever. where that trade hurts us more is in losing necas and i would do anything in my power to convince them to take suzuki, 13th overall, bokk, or whatever the hell else they'd need to sub him out but you probably don't get it done without that hurt. the *only* positive you could take from losing necas is that it would probably provide us the space for another developmental forward to take a full time role and perhaps blossom for the opportunity. having the "best system" or whatever is fantastic but it's meaningless if none of those players turn into nhl players because you can't find the room. there's nobody rotting on the vine here but it would be nice to start being able to circulate some guys through to get a look as their development dictates.
and as far as how it would influence our budget moving forward, you'd have to say goodbye to hamilton in my opinion but i think they're preparing for that possibility regardless. they're betting against him this year and make no secret about it. they haven't even had exploratory talks about an extension and the unspoken message is do it again. i don't know what happens if he does and i don't know what happens if he doesn't, but when you're willing to take that position you're making a quiet admission in my opinion. the fan enthusiasm doesn't seem to mirror the organizational enthusiasm.
