I'd do Holden for Yakupov's labrador.
Yakupov's stock has certainly gone down, but not that low.
Totally agree. I think our priorities should be:
+ Re-sign Boedker (if possible)
+ Re-sign Matthias (if possible)
+ Re-sign Mackinnon
+ Attempt to acquire Drouin
+ Trade Barrie for picks (if possible) - or in Drouin trade
+ Trade Grigorenko for picks (if possible) - or trade
Drouin - Mackinnon - Boedker
Landeskog - Duchene - Iginla
Matthias - Soderberg - Rantanen
Mcleod - Mitchell - Comeau
(Martinsen)
Beauchemin - Johnson
Zadorov - Holden
Gelinas - Bigras
(Stuart)
Varlamov
Pickard
We hold to that, until we can then offload Iginla, Stuart. Hopefully by then Rantanen has developed enough.
I realise the changes proposed above is nominal, and almost the same team as we have now.
+ I don't want to pay Barrie big coin for an offensive only D-man.
+ Grigorenko isn't cutting the mustard.
+ We'd be pushing the cap with the above roster anyways (thanks to Beauchemin's, Stuart's, Iginla's ridiculous contracts), so players like Radulov are completely out of the question.
Don't also get me wrong, that team will finish near the bottom of the league, but we are building towards to following season, where we can replace ageing vets with hopefully quality players.