If they want a true borderline top-line forward, I'm not sure how else they acquire one. I doubt any of the marquee free agents sign here (either since they want to play in the US or can probably get better offers ... it's basically realistically only Guentzel and Reinhart anyway), and then you're left with a bunch of second-tier guys like Toffoli etc. I get the impression they aren't particularly interested in "rolling it back", or in other words, spending most of their available cap space on re-upping their own free agents and tinkering with depth pieces around the edges.
They don't have a ton of trade currency in prospects or picks (unless they make the top prospects available, which I don't think they'll do). By process of elimination, one of the ways they could actually shake up the roster is by not paying the top defensive pair ~$16M in total cap space, so it's not entirely crazy, in my opinion. I don't think they'll necessarily do it, but I can see the logic. Having a $5M-$6M guy next to Hughes instead of a $7.5M-$8M guy, probably in combination with somehow ditching Mikheyev, gives you more flexibility to make changes.