That’s a lot of turnover… half your d core coming off the cup finals? Mikkola and OEL have been great and a big difference from last year’s run. Feel like you’re undervaluing Evan Rodrigues here too, not many guys can just step onto a top-line and produce when it matters and not look out of place (Rodrigues is always so underrated). Between Rodrigues, Tarasenko, Okposo, OEL, Kulikov and Mikkola, that’s loading up on vets.
Ultimately, my point is that you guys are gonna have to replace the quality guys you’re losing (Skjei, Pesce, Martinook, Teravainen, not to mention Guentzel) to stay at the same level, and I don’t know why you wouldn’t wanna put every penny towards that when you were just one insanely unlucky period away from the conference finals. Of course I agree you can’t expect perfect cap optimization, and there will always be guys that are overpaid and underpaid, but I just am a bit surprised at how many Canes fans are content watching all these quality players walk knowing how close you were to the cup. I respect the long-term mindset, but at a point the urgency should take over to win while Slavin and the D core is still world class imo.