I do not think we can build a winning team with Karlsson making market value, the dead salary we have on the books for the next four seasons after this one, and an internal player salary budget.
Lose-Lose-Lose whichever way you play it.
If you trade Karlsson with enough of the dead weight to make a difference (ryan + Gaborik) then you don't get anything of real value back to help with rebuild/retool. Essentially you cleared some cap space but you are waiting 3-4 years for the kids to improve around a core of Stone/Duchene/Ceci/Chabot.
Or you trade some of the picks and prospects to clear the same cap room and build around Stone/Duchene/Ceci/Chabot/Karlsson...but with a lot less youth to fill in around the core, however you have the potential (maybe small) of competing in the short-term and you still have Karlsson.
Or you trade Karlsson without the dead weight and reap a lot of picks prospects, but you are still waiting 3-4 years for the dead salary to clear so you can't bring in any free agents and likely will not be competitive until the youth has matured into their primes.
What am I missing? Would love to see a plausible roster over the next 3-4 years than you think would be more competitive than what it would be with Karlsson and minus some picks and prospects. Also, why Karlsson? Why not trade Stone or Duchene to get rid of the dead salary? Wouldn't it make sense to keep the asset that is hardest to replace?
My philosophy will always be 1) you need elite talent to win as see by recent cup winners, 2) if you can't build a round a 10 mil star player in his prime then your internal budget is too small to compete at all, and 3) it is better to trade away the picks and prospects than the star player because you can replenish the picks/prospects easier than the star player.
Look at the amount of holes we have right now on our team. Regardless of whether we keep Karlsson and lose Stone and/or Duchene, or keep all three, with the dead money we have and the amount of core+secondary players who have played out their cheap RFA contracts and are entering UFA years at the same time, we'd be building a team on a poor foundation. With our current budget and ownership, there'd be almost zero chance of success.
Trading Duchene and/or Stone doesn't solve things at all because neither of them are valuable enough to return us assets to rebuild with and allow us to dump a major contract like Ryan's. Karlsson is the only piece valuable enough for that. At the deadline, Vegas' top prospect, two 1sts, and a conditional pick was rumoured to be the back bones of an offer for Ryan+Karlsson. If true, I'm not sure how you'd get the perception back that we'll get nothing of real value for Karlsson if we attach Ryan to him.
I cannot game plan our roster over the next 4 years without Karlsson because that is way too open ended, way too much changes in 4 years time in terms of who we draft, how they develop. What I can game plan for you, is what our payroll looks like if we sign Karlsson at market value (he has claimed he wants what he is worth, won't take a discount), and then have to potentially build a team with Stone+Duchene on big UFA contracts, along with the dead salary we currently have....I've done it in multiple posts already.
Trading Karlsson+Ryan for a big package of picks/young players/prospects gives us the OPPORTUNITY to build a good team. It doesn't mean it'll work. From that point, it's up to management to draft+develop and work efficiently within our salary structure. The point is, if we keep Karl+Ryan, I don't think we have any opportunity to build a good team for the reasons I have outlined in probably a dozen+ different posts by now.
It is a bad situation, because I agree in the fundamental idea that it shouldn't make sense to trade away a player like Karlsson, but our current situation is the exception to the rule.
